Why are shrinks called shrinks?

The whole point of getting counselling/therapy is to help one make sense of troubling things.

Once the trouble is gone, life becomes far simpler. One's head gets smaller, or shrunk.

-

In therapy, there is often the challenge of getting the client to see themselves and understand their responsibility. It can very difficult.

There is a way to get this to happen.

People generally look down on the ground when they think, when they talk and think to themselves. Likewise, people are more likely to self-reflect when looking downwards.

Rand + Psychology = Win!

"Feel deeply to think deeply." 

NOT

"Think deeply to feel deeply"

There, if you take this and run with it, you may never have to see a psychologist.
Ever.

Personality Tests! -The Enneagram

OK, so I took the time to take an enneagram test. The results came back and it was pretty much what I expected.

Type 4. Essentially.

Also known as the Romantic, or the Individualist.

The basic fear of the Romantic matches my own.
4s are afraid that in a world where everything seems to have its place, that one either does not have an identity, or cannot be distinguished from others.
The most fundamental desire of a four is to find themselves and their significance.

If it's sounding all airy and vague, let's compare that to the others.

Type

1
Desire. To be right and good.
Fear. To be corrupt and defective.

2
Desire. To feel loved, worthy of love.
Fear. To be unloved. To be unworthy of love.

3
Desire. To feel valuable.
Fear. To be unworthy.

...

The enneagram system is based on the assumption that people are only driven by a limited number of identifiable desires, and that a fear is the opposite of what they want. The system implies that to grow, one needs to see the deficiencies of sticking to one type and learn to understand the strengths of other types and see the connection.

I find that whatever I do, I have a need to be different. I feel that I cannot just fulfill the requirements. When I'm not being different, I feel unfulfilled.

So now, a 4 has a choice. He can pursue uniqueness through creativity, going where others have never gone before, self-expression. Or he can accept his existence as part of the world and learn to feel and enjoy the connectedness, accepting the external structures.

4s are really complex and have incredible desire for identity and self-understanding.

There's much more than what I can write here.

https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/how-the-enneagram-system-works/#levels

How to create a personality test

1

Find a characteristic, preferably something compelling/useful.

2

Identify the possible (or common, when it's impossible) values that characteristic can take.

3

Find effects that characteristic may lead to.

Eg. if someone is shy, they may find it hard to make friends and hence have fewer friends.

4

Create test for it. Then help people interpret the meaning of the results.

All those fishies, crabbies, shrimp, lobsters...

Every time I go into a Chinese Seafood Restaurant, I'd see these parents showing the kids the seafood, pointing at the fish, discussing them, and I always wonder if they ever tell the kids the truth. You know, that we kill the fish, gut them, slice them, dice them, cook and eat them.

Another story. A little boy (okok, a distant relative) goes to visit the graves of his ancestors on Ching Ming Festival. Pointing at the picture (of his great-great-grandfather, or the father's father's father) on the grave, he asks inquisitively, "who is this?", "what does great-great-grandfather mean?". And I couldn't wait to hear him ask "Where did they go?" so I could hear the euphemisms and stories people tell to avoid telling the truth. 

Then I remembered when I, personally, realized people die. It was a funeral, and I saw oh so many grieving relatives and the open-casket viewing. I felt a deep fear for a long time afterwards. I would look up at the stars, and, knowing what a light year was, I realized I would never get to one of those stars alive (something I had assumed humans could do).

Looking back, I wish adults would be shining beacons of honesty. It would be so much easier for children growing up. If anything, sweet lies are dangerous because they are sweet and addictive. Once one is on it, it's tough to ween off, and there may always be a need for a fantasy, non-reality. And this makes one weaker.

Re: On Character

This post is a response to http://voiceofsamuel.blogspot.hk/2015/02/on-character.html

I don't think I need to state that this is a complex and personal topic. I've taken almost a month to finish this off.

Character is one of those words I know but have never explored. It's vague and mysterious to me, and I hate ambiguity (personality trait!). I am more familiar with words like personality, values, ethics. That's why I am drawn to it.

I certainly do feel the desire, to construct my own identify and behaviour according to some to ideal or principle; ...

I certainly do too. When I read Ayn Rand, I want to be an industrialist, like John Galt. When I read Chomsky, I thought linguistics to be what I want to study, and I should be a polymath. When I read about Alan Turing, I thought AI was what I wanted to do. and that being a nerd is a virtue.

It's all good. 

yet I end up saying what I think and act on my gut feeling. 

Yup. That's what we all do. It's the cliche/fact that the conscious mind is far slower than the unconscious mind. (This is only natural, because the conscious experience is but the product of a vast amount of unconscious processes. Every conscious entity must have a far larger unconscious in the background). I often wish I was more in control of my behavior, but I can only handle so much cognitive load, over which performance drops precipitously. 

Welcome to the human experience!

"The gut feeling". It's up there with "the ghost in the shell", "soul" and "closed source software" in ambiguity. Our gut feelings are but the subconscious, shaped by the past.

Not in a bad way. Everyone has their own character, and there's no need to explicitly change who you are. From a Christian perspective, I am a special creation by God, with all my strengths and blunders. For the postmodernist, everyone can have their own different yet equally valid ideal - so why not just try to be myself? 

I've tried to try being someone else other than me too! It's hard work and demotivating. It looks fake from the outside, it's manipulative, deceptive and ultimately a waste of time. So why do we do it?

For me, it was a fear of not "fitting in". The fear of rejection is extremely powerful stuff. It can cause self-sabotage, self-attack, self-censorship self-denial, all of which makes the fear worse, because when I realized I was doing this, I realized other people could see this too. And so I need to deny myself some more. 

Like one time I was on exchange, and I was asked, just about every night, to go clubbing. I guess the social part of me really wanted to go check out Korean nightlife, but overall, I felt anxiety, tiredness and the prospect of window-shopping excited me more. My social part would start with "hmmm I wonder what it's like..." but then move on to "You won't go because you're just scared." At the end of the day, I took a compromise and tried it. That night turned out to be fun but I wouldn't want to do it any more than monthly.

Sometimes, I find that one has to do what feels best overall, even if you feel peer pressure or "abnormal" or whatever self-rejecting occurs. (For the latter - go seek professional help.)

Perhaps others value my true self, rather than me trying to be someone I'm not. 

Hmmm...you got me thinking on this one. It sounds absolutely correct, but my gut says otherwise.

Firstly, what is the true self? It's elusive. Multi-layered, multi-dimensional, seamless. What is Eugene's true self? Is it when he is blogging, working or hiking?

How about a conundrum? What if you trying to be someone you're not IS in fact part of your "true self"? Because then, the two would hardly be a dilemma.

Secondly, you will always find people who value you, whatever you are. It's like 

There are customers for just about everything, and goods that satisfy demand you might not have even dreamt of. At the same time, I think what we value in others goes on so many levels. I may value my doctor for skill and expertise, but not care at all about his character. Or like how I have the occasional sports friend, whose skills, fitness and humor are great, but whom I don't know much about. We rarely like someone because every aspect of their character were valuable to us.

On another level, you need others to value you. That's perfectly fine. Humans generally do need to feel valued by others. But I would say that is not why you should be honest - it is inherently in your self-interest and the interest of others to be honest, because it ensures harmony and happiness. 

"It will help you not to expect that fulfilment from people who you already know are incapable of giving it." Henri Nouwen.

OK. All in all, it's an interesting, to-the-point piece. I have a question. What was it that inspired/caused you to write this?

SIS Class of 2010 Reunion - 2014

I have finally caved and decided to write this post.

Reunions are pretty daunting.

Before the Reunion, I did some "research".

http://www.buzzfeed.com/laraparker/stages-of-being-invited-to-your-high-school-reunion#.pbO8K1zAjo

http://greeblehaus.com/2013/08/guest-post-how-i-avoided-high-school-reunion-anxiety.html

I was anxious. Are people going to be better than me, in my own eyes? Then I looked back at myself and saw how I wasn't the person I said I wanted to be back when I graduated. I thought I would be a lot more.

Here's what I learnt.

People regress to the mean.

Without perfect information, we can always assume that people will lie close to the mean. And most observations confirm this.
My fears of being inferior are generally unfounded.

Some people seem to have found their thing, most haven't. Like most people in their 20s (so I've been told), we are exploring, trying stuff out and having fun.

You are mortal. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Even though I didn't personally know the classmates who have passed away, it's certainly and truly broken my sense of immortality. 

Success, failure, happiness, sadness, anger are only ever temporary states. Enjoy everything life throws at you, and do what you want to do, what only you can do.

Same goes for reunions. If I enjoy it, or I don't enjoy it, it's still going to go on. 

Being normal is a f***ing waste of time.

It's been 4.5 years since the great waste of time known as school, for which this blog is named after. I learnt a lot, experienced a lot, but it's nothing compared to the odd homeschooling folk. Why be in class when you could be fulfilling your purpose for living, experiencing life instead of reading about it in a classroom? For example, there are home-schooled kids devoting time everyday to gymnastics classes. Since it takes at least 10,000 hours to become an expert at something, and being at school take 7 hours of productive time out of every day, school kids have 7 hours less time to do what they want to do.

And that's if the school kids even know what they want to do. Having followed a routine for the past 15+ years, coming out to the real world and having to set your own path gets daunting, especially for the shy and relatively sheltered.

Being given the freedom to set one's own course from the beginning means that by the 20s, they will be competent captains and sailors on the waters of life.

Comparing oneself to others is a 100% successful way to destroy self-worth and lose yourself.

Never compare yourself to others. There will always be someone better than you. Rather, look within yourself to find out why you do this. 

Oh, and also, there's no external solutions to emotional insecurity. One can try, as I have tried, but it'll always fly back in ones face until you learn this.

The 6 Pillars of Self-Esteem.

See soon-to-be linked article.

Conclusion

I guess this is the first of many reunions to come.

Live long and prosper!

Version 1.0 04012015

What does it take to be a good developer? (Empathy)

Empathy.

Why? To develop good code, one must understand what code is already there and what the requirements are. The emotional motivation must be consistently present - it cannot merely be "the rush of excitement" at finishing a task or project, or enjoying working in a team (because what happens if you have lots of independent work to do?).

Why am I writing this? Because I'm not driven by logic or reasoning. In fact, I am emotionally sensitive. And so, where I lack interest in logical analysis, empathy motivates me.

I have been both motivated and demotivated by adrenal drives and team drives. Therefore, I have learnt to take that as the icing on the cake and nothing more.

The empathy I am describing is incredibly beautiful. At its core, empathy with a creation made of your own brainwork is perhaps the highest expression of self-love and mental integration. It's where logic and reasoning and love intertwine.

How I Solved a 10-year old Insecurity in Less Than 5 Minutes

Dear Reader(s), 

This article may change the way you see me, past, present and future. I hope you get something out of it.

Cheers,

Eugene.

Problem

I have an insecurity.

I have always had a fear of being alone.

- Darkness

- Friends leaving.

- Being picked up late back in school.

- Socializing.

- Friends not texting back.

It's a terrible burden that has sapped energy.

Change

OK, it took 5-7 years to build up to this. But 5 minutes max was all it took to understand and uproot this. Some remnants could still exist, but as of today, none have been discovered or attributed to this.

Trigger

Long story short, I am sitting at the office OTing one night, feeling very productive but kinda lonely. So I talked about Kumon with a friend. He talks about flushing Kumon papers and coming up with all kinds of excuses not to do them (eg. down the toilet, throwing them in the trash). I realized I was always the good student and did all the Kumon, even if it meant overtime. (Overtime at age 7 lol.)

And then out of nowhere, I made a connection. The loneliness of OT was the same as the loneliness experienced by the younger me, all those times when I was picked up late, in detention, etc.

Change

• Realizing the emotionally significant experiences, going as far back as possible: 
• Childhood: Since kindergarten, my caregivers kept being late coming over. I waited for hours. It was bad enough to see everyone else gone home, or out to play and not being able to join. I felt abandoned. On top of this, I had separate issues about social anxiety, which only multiplied its effects. 
• Early Childhood: Left in daycare center. For whatever reason, I can only recall short segments.
• "It's not my fault." (or "It's not your fault"):
• The realization that there is no inherent defect in me, that my issue is caused by certain external factors outside my control. 
• The realization that I am paying for the bad decisions of some people. 
• Because it is caused by external factors in the past, I see my freedom, power to choose.
• HOWEVER, stopping here would create another problem called "Victim Mentality". So...
• Self-reaffirmation
• I have done very well given this. 
• Purpose: Inoculates against self-criticism.
• "I am actually very different.": 
• Links my best work, experiences, happiness. 
• Gather up all my finest moments.
• The things I can have and do without this issue.
• What will I do differently from now on?
• Solving a major hurdle is kinda useless, if I didn't then move forwards.
• What is my new vision? 
• Redefine all relationships as mutually-supportive and never due to loneliness.
• What is the underlying "human nature"? To what extent are humans "social animals"?
• Curiosity, Rational research needed.

Aftermath

Before this, I had an immense issues dealing with loneliness. 

Now, I have less than 10% of the original. I used to wait for people to respond on whatsapp, watch their last seen time/date. It also made it very difficult to actually sit down and do individual work, because I feared being alone. Now I don't care anymore, except for matters of business urgency. 

I used to feel isolated, lonely and homesick. Now, I can feel almost none of it, simply because I expect to feel isolated, lonely and homesick and don't have any of it anymore. It's a strange feeling, like opening my eyes after a good night's sleep. As my mind synchronizes, the remaining anxiety are disappearing.

Considering myself as an introvert, I did well independently, but as I grew up and went through the "socialization phases", the issue began to affect me. I had to be out and always doing something with others. Sometime, it became hard to stay put and focused on hard stuff. This affected my university grades. 

I can only wonder where I would be now, if I didn't have this issue, or had it resolved early on.

I have come home, wherever I am. 

And ahead of time. I'd hate to be going through this during a mid-life crisis in my 40s. For that I'll be ever grateful.

Impact

As far as I can tell, I have met many with similar anxieties (who have no idea). Logically, these issues will persist forever or are patched, until one fixes them. Over the course of a lifetime, they can be a massive drain on happiness, satisfaction and productivity. 

Most people need to be seriously affected to seek help with their bugs. Ironically, this means that people who have milder forms, or are adept at coping with or avoid the bug, may have less incentive to figure it out and tolerate these bugs for longer. 

Why should people fix their bugs completely, no matter what? 

• Murphy's Law. Because bugs always come back to haunt them. At the worst times possible.
• All bugs persist until the day they are fixed, or the host dies. All bugs are lifetime max-security prison sentences. 
• You will live better. Most bugs sap mental energy.
• Able to discover your intrinsic motivation. Issues prevent motivation, cause procrastination. "What do you want?". 
• For other people. So that the world has less assholes, less violence. So that you can bring the best to the world. Many issues cause negative feelings towards others. No, that's an understatement. Why are people supporting violence against others, which is completely morally insane?
• So that the world can change.

Work. Could this prevent one from moving forwards? Do unresolved issues prevent an increase in performance? 

Relationships? What can an attachment disorder do to a relationship? How many relationships have not worked because of insecurities? Could this lead one to stay in a bad relationship? Ever heard of the slang "Clingy Girlfriend"? 

Old age? What happens when one's kids are gone and one is in a nursing home or hospital? Could this be a cause of senior depression?

Denialism is common, possibly due to ignorance,defense mechanisms. "I am no problems!" is the most frequently heard words spoken in group counselling sessions. Such people almost always have the most unresolved issues.

TakeAway

Resolving issues can be incredibly fast with the knowhow.

Self-therapy is easy.

Personal development can be completely free and open-source.

We are a few steps away from resolving issues. The problem is not "HOW?", but "WHY?".

A world with no government, no violence is 100% technically (psychologically, sociologically) feasible.

What to do about...Occupy Central - The Final Solution

This is the result of a lifetime (so far...) of experiences, critical thinking and research. However, it doesn't belong to me. It's there for all to see.

Update:

So it has come to this. Protesters, possibly agent provocateurs...possibly even a co-opted movement.
It's not an effective way to change. However, it seems the most logical for many, and so it will go on. It will run its course, wherever that may lead.

This is the solution as I see it.

Assumptions:
Initiation of Force is morally wrong, for any reason.
Morality is fundamentally based on non-aggression principle.
Non-aggression principle is a universal, natural necessity for any social group, and hence desired for all humans coexisting.

• Proof: Pro-aggression principle would mean everybody must destroy everybody else immediately. For groups to form means some are not attacking. Attacking destroys group, so the only way a group exists is through non-aggression principle. Apply the same concept to property & stealing.

The state has legal monopoly over the Initiation of Force.
The initiation of force is against the non-aggression principle and immoral.
Hence the state is immoral.

The state can change its image, but that does not change its definition.
If one works for the state, then one is working for an immoral cause.
This is the original sin that poisons all the morally-good deeds state agencies do do.

Building freedom starts from early childhood.
Every experience, every habit, belief, attitude builds on previous memory. So one must go back chronologically to find the root cause of every behavior.
Teach children that you don't initiate force to get what you want. It is wrong.
That means parents and adults don't initiate any kind of force against kids, for any reason. It's that simple.

Teach kids HOW to think, to be confident.
Don't need to teach WHAT to think. A rational, whole mind exposed to irrationality will see it for what it is. The mind will come to the logical conclusion, which has a tendency to always be constant.

When most people have minds like this, a kind of herd immunity will arise that protects the rest, but eliminates the disease. The rest can then grow.


How will we reach this new utopia naturally and WITHOUT any Initiation of Force?
Thinking rationally, rethinking, challenging, viewing concepts with new eyes!
Acting upon those rational thoughts.
Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Technology.


How will we actually reach this utopia?
Technology.
Economic instability. This encourages/rewards people who taking risks in investment, spending. All good for new stuff.
Startups. Imagine multiple times the number of startups now solving all sorts of problems, with almost everybody involved.
Alternative currencies, markets, medicine, therapy, distributed communications.
Social networking. (Continuously evolving. Free from the ground up.)
Massive "population explosion" with AIs through a series of open-source AI breakthroughs. (Unpredictable timeframe.) Humans would face very stiff competition from highly scalable, rapidly growing, effectively immortal beings with mental abilities far exceeding our own.


How can we fail? Why is it Urgent?
Science, technology  are double-edged swords.
All the tech created to control, destroy indiscriminately is catching up with us...Eg. AI, advanced analytics, spy tech, military, psychological techniques. Our power to initiate force vastly outmatches our power to love and think.
Something big will happen sooner or later...Eg. world war, major financial disasters, public hysteria.
If you as an individual conscious entity dies. (Humanity doesn't fail, you just don't get to see the good results :) )


Who will win?
The rational side will, eventually. The question is how quickly - in our lifetime would be AWESOME!
Humanity, historically speaking has been getting more rational. For most of history, I'm not sure humans even understood reason, evidence, philosophy.
If you consider all possibilities, this is the only fate that matters. Tyranny, dark ages...that just means we haven't quite evolved fully yet. Nuclear extinction, asteroids...not much can be done if it really happens. Dismissed!


How many people?
Millions at least (Libertarians, all sorts of fringe groups).
Growing exponentially (Nature of social media and a persistent, rational message).
Information absorbed into public consciousness, becoming public knowledge...effectively permanent. (Who hasn't heard of "childhood trauma"? Insecurities? PTSD? Counselling? Don't hit children? Homeschooling?)

Nobody knows. Probably more than most would think.


How soon?
Unpredictable. Some places may reach this state faster than others.
Conservatively, give it a generation or two.
Throw in some accompanying socioeconomic changes and the changes are huge and getting bigger exponentially.



What can you do?
You know how Christians spread the Gospel?
Just spread the word any opportunity you get. Be persistent.
Christianity, Rome were not built in a day.


Can this all be wrong?
Oh, of course.
Feel free to present your arguments! :)



Tangents:

Could sentient alien life have reached this?
Probably. The non-aggression principle is quite universal. At some point, they are going to have to do this, or the technology they created was going to consume them.


Is this what 2001: A Space Odyssey is about?
Possibly. Man (Dave Bowman) must use his brain, body and off-the-shelf tech to overcome tech, manipulation and untruths, or be consumed. When Man does overcome them, he attains some sort of enlightenment.

Man is in the vacuum of the airlock, without gravity. He has precious seconds to shut out the deadly void of space, turn the air on, get gravity. Once that is done, it will all work out. But this is the crucial step.


A work in progress...

What keeps you going?

While reading Reddit, I came across this

http://en.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1txt9b/what_keeps_you_going_serious/
And I asked myself what kept me going - what actually keeps me going?

Like most people, I've been through good times, meh times and times that I felt bad about. But I always work through them in the end. Why?

I thought about this the whole of last week, whenever I felt the slightest sense of worry, fear, anger, frustration and other negative emotions. And out of it, three words consistently appeared out of the mist - hope, wholeness and purpose.


Hope. A belief that it always gets better, as long as you keep it up. Faith without the expectations.


Purpose. The meaning of whatever you do.

A: Why do I write programs?
B: On a basic level, because I like the feeling of my fingers tapping on a good keyboard. That marvelous awe and reverence for the countless engineers, designers that made it possible for test to appear on my screen, at my command.
A: But if that, you could have become anything else that requires lots of typing.
B: That's true, I also like blogging. : )
A: What makes developing software so attractive?
B: It's about "that jazz" of having written something meaningful and difficult, that nobody has ever written before. It's about seeing real users - most of which I will never meet in person, getting value out of it. It's about giving birth to a creature that lives in a server in cyberspace, with its own mind and ability to act.
A: But the life of a developer is filled with problems. What gives you the drive to solve them elegantly?
B: And that leads us into the next point...


Wholeness.

I believe that people's minds are fragmented. We behave in one way together with our parents, another way with our friends, another way while we are in an exam etc. Like nearly all useful software, there is no way one class/routine/function can handle every situation. So what we call ourselves is really many pieces working together.

Sometimes, one piece cannot fit the situation. So they split.

But once split, conflicts may appear. In computers, they're called bugs. In humans, procrastination is a classic and widespread example. You want to work, but the other side wishes to play.

Of course, in procrastination, play wins and work loses. How do you get parts to work together?

This process is called integration. The end result is wholeness.

The path to wholeness is not necessarily a happy one. There are often failures and causes to be unhappy. 

This reddit user puts it well.

I feel like this quote can sum it up for me.
''I actually attack the concept of happiness. The idea that - I don’t mind people being happy - but the idea that everything we do is part of the pursuit of happiness seems to me a really dangerous idea and has led to a contemporary disease in Western society, which is fear of sadness. It’s a really odd thing that we’re now seeing people saying “write down 3 things that made you happy today before you go to sleep”, and “cheer up” and “happiness is our birthright” and so on. We’re kind of teaching our kids that happiness is the default position - it’s rubbish. Wholeness is what we ought to be striving for and part of that is sadness, disappointment, frustration, failure; all of those things which make us who we are. Happiness and victory and fulfillment are nice little things that also happen to us, but they don’t teach us much. Everyone says we grow through pain and then as soon as they experience pain they say “Quick! Move on! Cheer up!” I’d like just for a year to have a moratorium on the word “happiness” and to replace it with the word “wholeness”. Ask yourself “is this contributing to my wholeness?” and if you’re having a bad day, it is.'' 

- Hugh Mackay

 

Whoa! Did you hear that? Even the bad is really good. Now that's enlightening zen.

On a more serious note, I think that sums up what I feel about my Facebook feed. It's this invisible pressure to be happy, to be seen happy, and to do happy things. To laugh, to joke, to make gags, to party, eat exciting food, get cool gadgets.

Which are all great fun. Except maybe happiness isn't the default setting for everyone. Maybe for some people, it's really more important to be whole, among other things, like being smart, or interesting. Maybe that bad day you're having is actually a blessing in disguise.

Oops, that's a rant/analysis for another day.

What keeps you going?

v1.0

Gravity: A Space Odyssey?

While watching the movie, I became rather curious as to why there seemed to be no telling of Ryan's story. But then I realized it's all there.

The main character buries herself in her work (18 hour shifts), which puts them in greater immediate danger, but ultimately saves them from being shredded in the false safety of the space shuttle. I saw this to mean that while overwork is better than false comfort and can help someone move on in the short term, you can't do it forever because doing it any longer would kill not only you, but also everybody who cares about you.

Her fellow astronaut helps save her from the carnage, but is swept away. Even here, we see how she must save herself by unhooking from her work (symbolized by the satellite repairs).

Surviving the initial storm, she realizes it has taken a toll on her oxygen - the problem is killing her slowly. AND she's spinning. Which, (wait for it...) could be a metaphor for how people with psychological issues tumble in endless loops forever until they get help.

Thankfully, her man returns from the carnage. He has the stupidest idea of trying to retrieve the other dead astronaut (which definitely freaked out at least one of the audience, besides me) while she is running out of air. That looked like one unlucky headshot - "such a stupid way to die".

However, she is slowing them both down. The space tow scene could symbolize how her past baggage made it difficult for them both to move on.

Once outside the international space station, they must grab onto the station, because they used up all their fuel on the way there. Here, as they tumble out of control, she gets caught in the parachute cords. A possible symbolism here would be her joining the space program. It saves her from flying off into the emotional void, but it also looks like they broke up. Plus, he's out of gas.

We don't know explicitly what happens to her man. For all we know, he could have lived for a while and chose not to respond. What matters is he's gone now. The porthole shot reminds me of those old movies where a woman stares longingly into the distance.

In the space station, we see how she gets along. The fetal position shot signifies her psychological and technical development. She does some stupid things, like flying through the burning chamber into the wall with the fire extinguisher...and knocking herself out. (that was fun, we all LOLed. Also, the interior reminds me of Halo)

Wait, fire going out of control...sealing the bulkheads...knocking herself out trying to suppress the inferno? Could that be symbolic of her internal struggle? Or simultaneously, her burning desire to leave the training and actually go to space?

People have a tendency to compartmentalize the trauma they can't deal with. It's the natural way to move on and keep going.

So, she tries to escape on the soyuz pod. She gets it out, only to have it bungie right into the exploding space station. (sorry, woman driver jokes came to mind.) It is as if her lifeline is now preventing her from moving forwards.

Lucky for her, the debris field returns and she is now free, in space. The destruction of the ISS and the cutting of the lifeline could be symbolic of cutting the umbilical cord and literally blasting off.

It's exciting for a while, but now that she is freely floating in space, she must find the meaning of her existence. Find the reason to turn the air back on. Find the will to survive and get back to earth.

She attempts to contact others for help. But all she gets is trivia. Nobody understands. It's like something out of Lost in Translation, a kind of empty nihilism - and in space too.

And of course, there are her childhood problems associated with her dad expecting a son. Parental expectations can ruin childhoods. "There is no greater pain, than to remember happy times in misery." The inner child was left alone, wondering as she was forced to grow up. To me, the howling was the innocent child attempting to reconnect with the rest of her, just as dogs howl to signify their location.  

The howling scene probably ranks as one of the hardest scenes I've watched. At first, it was like - a grown woman pretending to be a dog! - how could that not be funny? But then, it started becoming sad. That was some brilliant emoting there.

But time is running out.

The answer comes in the form of a hypoxia-induced hallucination - "Landing is Lift-Off". In psychological terms, that means to resolve a past issue is to move forwards. And to resolve issues, one must first be grounded in reality and recognize its nature. Only then can one move on. (though I'm pretty sure for a second, we all wanted Clooney back! the audience almost get what they wanted.)

Cut to the capsule blasting itself free. That was really cool and realistic. She is now ready to face life and reality all over again. But to get to her new life, she must be prepared to enjoy the ride... in the burning TianJong space-station.

Back on Earth, she dumps the life-support, symbolized by the spacesuit, that allowed her to cope with the past. Then she breaks the surface into fresh air and swims out to shore and renewed life.

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I walked out of the movie thinking it was actually slightly hostile towards space development. Now that I realize it could be a metaphor, I realize it is not space that is the problem, but escapism from one's past. 

A word about 2001: A Space Odyssey. What 2001 expresses philosophically for the history and future of mankind, Gravity does for the individual. The two films are complementary and though both are set in space, they are on different orbits. But they do intersect.

More on this later.

Writing this review has allowed me to see the movie through new eyes. I'm sure many more interpretations will surface as more people recall the movie.

I hope you have too.