Mendeleev's Dream

It all starts with a dream. I was back in my 11th-floor loft home in China. Behind the couch in the living room is a big bay window. I was sitting on the windowsill talking to Jmill. He seemed to be a little depressed, so I tried to talk him out of it. Then the scenery changed. For some reason, I couldn't contact Jmill anymore, so I was very worried. I wish he didn't jump from the building or something, so I was wandering in a lobby with a low expectation that I'll find him somehow. Then all of sudden he appeared in his never-changing white cloth, I can't hide my excitement at seeing him and just ran to him with tears of joy and hug him super tightly. "It's so great that you're still alive!" I said. And then he hugged me back tightly as well. This is where the prompt of the above image came from.

I woke up with a feeling of having been crying, that special chest squeeze kind of sensation was very present. I stayed on my bed trying to analyze what just happened. After some moments of processing my emotions, I suddenly realize that I actually like Jmill so much that I kinda want him to be my boyfriend. I want to talk to him more and hug him more.

Then I came up with a brilliant idea, I was trying to ask him to do a tarot reading for me the day before, but I still don't know what to ask in the tarot reading. But now I have a burning question. So I wrote down the question "Will you be my boyfriend before the end of Mars" and fold the paper. Then he does the reading without knowing the content of the paper. After finishing the reading, I gave the question paper to him, he looked at it, said yes immediately, and then he became my boyfriend. Everything went surprisingly smoothly.

Turns out dreams doesn't just help to consolidate memory, it can even help sluggish people to know who they liked. Perhaps when the brain is in a relaxed state, more subconscious emotions and information will be allowed to emerge and connect with each other. Just like how the periodic table is formed in Mendeleev's dream.

Love vs. Substance

If there is alchemy in this world, then it would probably be love.

Nothing else is as powerful as Love who can make mundane everyday sparkle, transform instant noodles chef to home-cooking chef, and slow down workaholic's fast paces and enjoy the present. If this is not life alchemy I don't know what is. I can never imagine myself just watching the sunset and feeling truly happy if I wasn't around someone I loved.

This is the magic of oxytocin. There are only a few legal ways to get long-term organic oxytocin without consuming anything, and they all start with an intimate relationship with someone.

I was watching a documentary talking about MDMA. As a substance that can produce oxytocin, it can actually help the patients to feel safe and loved enough to face the dark shit they have been through in their life. So it can have a good healing effect compared to the traditional antidepressant. It gives people who have never been loved properly a little trailer of what it's like to be loved truly. This trailer is eventually used to give people the courage to face themselves and love themselves, so they have a greater chance to meet love, and develop long-term and nourishing love. When two people are in love, even the act of looking at each other could produce a lot of oxytocin. This is very powerful.

With that being said, liking and loving someone is a state. And this state is tightly related to each party's own upbringing, how they interact with their primary caregivers, and whether their personality and appearance have familiar traits of the primary caregivers on the other party, etc. The process of producing oxytocin through love can be said to be an intricate syncing dance that transcends generations, space, and time.

For us, I reminded Jmill of his mom, and he reminded me of some traits of my dad but 1000x better.

Find People Who Can Celebrate Life With You And Have Fun With Them

I always heard stories of people who start to work super hard because they like someone. And I always thought that was a teenager thing because there doesn't seem to be a big increase in my productivity.

But then after I carefully think about it again, I realize that there's actually a big change in my life. I start to care about the quality of my life not just in terms of money, but more in terms of if I have spent quality time with my loved ones. I rarely felt depressed again. I start to do a lot of passion projects and feel so alive and happy. Life is much more worth living after Jmill appeared in my life. Life is still full of troubles and there are still a lot of challenges in our relationship, but it's bearable and I'm hopeful. There is more than one time where I feel pure satisfaction and contentment about my life because of this nurturing relationship.

End with what my mentor said to me during Mars College - Life is not linear, it doesn't have a rank, don't chase people who can't celebrate your life, and always find people who can celebrate life with you and have fun with them.

(I was usually hesitant to celebrate my relationship by posting pictures or writing posts about it, worrying that it would be awkward if it didn't go well. But it doesn't matter. The celebration should be a celebration of the good memories that already happened in the past, and it shouldn't be carrying the burden of future expectations. So glad to have someone practicing NVC with me.)