Find a Life Partner

I’ve avoided not to title this piece "How to Find a Life Partner." After all, I'm hardly an authority on telling anyone how to navigate matters of the heart, especially when it comes to finding that special someone. However, I've chosen to delve into this topic because, like many, it's something I've given lots of thought to over the years.

For those interested in well-crafted content on relationships, I would recommend checking out this two-part article by Tim Urban. I'm a big fan of Tim's work, so pardon the bias, but his insights are truly worth a read. Now, let's dive into my ramblings on the subject.

I think it's important to open up discussions about finding a life partner. From a young age (especially in my culture), many of us are ingrained with the notion that one day, we'll tie the knot and start a family. If we follow the conventional life trajectory — growing up, finishing school and going into the workforce — marriage and family often seem like the next logical steps. Considering that we may spend nearly two-thirds of our lives with a life partner, it surprises me how little guidance we receive and how little time we spend on finding the right one.

Think back to our school days. We were encouraged to prioritise academics and achieving good grades. Some parents even enforced strict rules against dating until we reached a certain age or educational milestone. The message was clear: focus on your studies now, and worry about relationships later. Even after years of academic pursuits, the advice remains the same: keep your focus on education, and romance can wait. It seems to me that adults, having navigated their own share of relationship pitfalls, aim to shield us from similar experiences. Of course, some of us may venture into relationships during school or university, parents often view them as fleeting and inconsequential.

Let’s be honest, it's hard to pinpoint the ideal time to start learning about romantic relationships, but one thing I am quite certain: we could all benefit from early guidance on dating, breakups, and married life. Unfortunately, such lessons are rarely integrated into our school curriculum. I think it’s not due to a lack of intent, but perhaps due to the challenge of standardising such personal matters in a larger scale.

The disparity between the significant time we'll spend with a life partner and our limited understanding of relationships strikes me as absurd. Relationships are like investments. Consider this: beyond the 8-12 hours spent at work each day, we spend another 12-16 hours with our partners. Multiply that by the years of marriage, and it becomes a substantial investment of time. I often wish someone had taught this simple wisdom to me at a younger age, say around 10, allowing me to clarify my priorities and explore relationships with more insight and intention.

Over the past few years, I’ve observed so many different scenarios of how my family members and friends have dealt with relationships. Thanks to these observations, I've discovered a guiding principle for myself: seek out individuals who share my core values. These values represent non-negotiable aspects of life that I refuse to compromise on, regardless of circumstances.

Why prioritise life values? When our values align with those of our partner, we can find common ground in navigating challenges and avoid petty arguments.

For example, consider a couple who disagrees on a financial matter, such as whether to buy a house or spend their savings on traveling the world. Both options may seem appealing, but if one partner values freedom and adventure while the other values stability, they may struggle to reach an agreement. As we know, when too many things are non-negotiable, conflicts are bound to arise sooner or later.

Currently, my life values include:

• Freedom: the liberty to live life on my terms, unrestricted by societal norms.

• Health: prioritising both physical and mental well-being.

• Lifelong learning: nurturing curiosity and embracing new experiences.

• Family orientation: aspiring to build a loving family unit.

• Integrity, transparency, and honesty: fostering trust and authenticity in all interactions.

My husband doesn’t share all of the above values with me. We have differences but we definitely are on the same page for the majority of these values. Yes, disagreements do arise from time to time, but they're much easier to resolve when we share many fundamental values.

My life with my husband hasn't always been smooth. However, whenever our relationship hits a wall, I refer back to my values and I feel a lot easier to either compromise or push it a little over our comfort zone.

My 2022 in review

Another year has passed and I am always in awe of time and its movement speed. 2022 is a year that I felt mostly in between the feelings of happiness, excitement, confusion, worry, and anxiety. If I have to think about this year as the number of achievements I’ve made, I would not be proud. I rather trick myself into thinking of how much solid ground I have laid out for the upcoming years so here we go.

Been in a serious relationship: it is amazing to be in a relationship that I can see a long-term path moving forwards. Some of us want to build a family or have a partner in the long run and so am I. If you read my previous post, having a happy family is one of my long term goals and I am so glad that I have found one for myself this year. It has not always been fun but one thing I am sure is I enjoy the company more than I used to think and I actually look forward to it more in the future.

Visit my family and friends in Vietnam: I was so desperate and stressful for being unable to go back to Vietnam during Covid. As someone who always yearns for independence and chose being away from family to build up that legacy, I was surprised myself of how much I wanted to visit my home country. During 4 months at home, I travelled back and forth between my parents and my sister place, while still had the opportunity to work remotely to Australia. I couldn’t ask for more. One thing I realised is that family has been and will always be a safe place, emotionally and physically. This is not new for sure. But I have come cross the feeling myself during this time back and I appreciate it dearly. Eventually, I will have my own family and what could be better if I already know its true value today.

Got promoted at work: I was promoted to a leader position in February 2022. Apart from a pay rise, what I was truly grateful for earning this promotion is having a different view of how things run in the corporate world. When I was working as an employee, I wanted to know what my boss is doing and what else can I do to help but when I work as a leader, I find myself having a broader perspective about the long term consequences of my actions. Additionally, I am frequently in doubt, whether I have done things nicely so that they benefit my team? from this experience, I know it’s only a matter of care or not care for what I do.

Bought my first car: I bought a used car in March this year. It doesn’t even have a reverse camera and I haven’t driven it much to be honest, but it does the job taking me from A to B. Having a car is so important here in Australia and thanks to car ownership, I collected enough points to rent my first place as a household.

Rent my own place: Yes that’s correct. I have signed my first rental contract after 5 years living in Australia. You might wonder why. Well, I always rented a small room in a property before and I had never gone through a real estate agent. This time I rent my own place, my name is on the rental binding contract and utilities bills. I pay a bit more on weekly basis but I finally feel like an adult now haha.

Get back on writing: I am a little embarrassed to say this but I didn’t write anything for almost 6 months. Even when I decided to write, I felt heavily obliged. But I always know that I want writing to be a part of my life and as a hobby, that’s why I am so glad I get back to it. More on writing later.

Be more aware of negative thoughts and be kinder to myself: if you know me well, you would know that I have been struggling to maintain a healthy mental stage. I am constantly stressed, anxious and worried about small little details. One of the most important act I can do for my mental health is having an awareness of negative thoughts, when do they arise and what should I do to respond to it. This has slowly brought me back to a healthier life this year.

I feel like anything I did this year will somehow be relevant to the upcoming years. With more fun, excitements, more disappointments and all other mixed feelings, I welcome 2023 with an open mind.

What really matters in life?

If I asked my mom this question, she would probably say having money and a happy family are the two things that really matter to her and to me (speaking for her daughter). My sister might say having a nice house where she has enough money to buy whatever she likes. Things like clothes, hand-pick furniture (of course, by her), travel tickets, etc. When I googled this question, there are 1,840,000,000 results varying from minimalism websites, buddha pages, magazines, etc. with titles like “10 ways to define what really matter”, “7 reminders of what really important in life”, etc. I don’t disagree with my mom, my sister or any of these articles. Their different responses just reflex one simple thing, there is only one unique answer for each person who asked.

So if it is that unique, asking this question isn’t really helpful. Instead, the question we should ask the public now should be “How do you know what matter in your life?” and then try to distill an approach from their answers to form your own decision. Imagine it’s like trying to find a neon skeleton in completed darkness 😄

But wait a minute, it still doesn’t feel right. I am sure you have been in a situation when you asked a question with a certain expectation for the answer but what you received was totally different. It’s like you asked about banana and the other person told you all about pineapple. It was obviously that two people were living in two different mental worlds. We normally weight up different aspects on different scales. So one more step is we should make it clear which aspects this question is targeting. We now should try to ask “How do you know what really matter in your career/personal life/family, etc.?

Ok the hard part is done. To find out what matters to one, we need to understand the roots of interest. Each individual has one or more unique interests, even the ones who say they are not interested in anything, their interest is hidden somewhere. Things that make them feel butterflies in their stomaches, things make them feel fulfilling, exciting and a sense of contentment. You now might ask a good movie can make people feel that way, does it mean movie is their interest? Yes, but what we are trying to figure out here is tied to the components in the previous question, career, personal life, family, etc, something bigger than a movie .

One way to know the roots of interest is to notice the signals or hints that the mind sends to us. For some people, it’s so easy to say out loud what they are interested in. It’s so obvious to them. This is especially true for artists. But for others, it’s clueless. Hence, picking on things like which sections at the bookstore we often stay longer, what kinds of activities we tend to go on the weekends, what groups of people we tend to hang out more than the others, what do you think repeatedly in the shower, might help.

Another way is to actually try different things for a certain period of time. If you never run before, try running 3 times per week and then stop will only make you hate running more. Try running every day for 30 days might not change your feeling toward this sport but it will definitely give you more insights on what will it bring you in the long run. In a nutshell, go all in for a certain period of time until you decently know and practice that stuff, if you don’t see any signals, go all out. This way might take you on a roller coaster of emotion, you feel so excited when you start and then experience a deep sense of disappointment as this is (again) not the thing that interests you at last. I personally think it’s ok to feel that way. At least, our emotion changes up and down, rather than just fluctuating at boredom. Life would be more compelling that way.

A third way that I am totally fond of is to follow our natural curiosity. Society seems to have very negative feelings toward fiction readers and promote the value of non-fiction, particularly self-help books. The term “reading books” seems to be engraved in human mind as if it’s an ultimate solution for wisdom and knowledge. That’s why book recommendation websites exist. These sites will be so helpful for fiction book readers but they will only make the non-fiction readers more miserable. If someone has to find book recommendations to fill in their reading time, I think they don’t follow their natural curiosity. If someone thirsts to be educated on certain topics, they would naturally try to read all the books on that topic anyway. Similarly, if you are keen to learn something, your natural curiosity will guide you there eventually.

Finding the roots of interest might be as easy as eating a piece of cake or as hard as lifting a heavy rock without a leverage. Some people might never find out what really matter to them, some were born with a strong sensation of what significances to them the most. Is it necessary to fit ourselves in a particular format? I don’t know. Each of us will have to sort it out ourselves. but the moment we found that neon colour in completed darkness, it would feel pretty awesome.

Tet

It’s the 26 of January - 5 days before Vietnamese Lunar New Year (aka Tet). Since I came to Australia, I tend to welcome this special occasion with emotional reactions. Things like “It’s been 3 years since the last time I celebrated Tet with my family. I miss Tet so much”. This year my emotion has evolved 😄  (I guess). I kind of have a mixed feeling for Tet. On the one hand, I keep imagining what would it be if I were home on Tet, quite predictably I know I would help my parents cleaning, re-organising stuff, groceries shopping, cooking, eating, visiting relatives and surely experiencing a taste of disappointment when Tet is about to end. These are exactly what I did every single year on Tet. On the other hand, I feel quite interesting observing (virtually) how everyone is briskly preparing for Tet in Vietnam. I’ve seen my friend posting how she made Chung cake (our traditional cake made with sticky rice, mung bean and pork, all wrapped in banana leaves). I’ve seen Instagram reels about my friends going back home after many months or even years of working away. Flowers, yes. How could I forget it? Northern Vietnamese likes to display peach or plum flowers on Tet. As a consequence, I’ve seen people selling and showing how beautiful their flowers are on Facebook. I was so familiar with all of these. It’s like watching a movie that I knew all the twists and the plots in advance.

A conventional judgement people normally put on expats is the longer they stay oversea, the more their memories about their country tradition and culture will fade away. I disagree with that. I actually think expats would never forget their tradition no matter how long they stay oversea, they just choose to show their feelings differently.

The longer I stay in Sydney, the more I would like to enjoy a “real Tet” with my family. I am living in Cabramatta - a Vietnamese community in Sydney where Asian food and drinks are just in a walking distance. They sell Chung cake, gio, cha (Vietnamese sausages) in every shop. They also have lion dances and fireworks few days before and during Lunar New Year’s Eve. However, it’s still not the Tet that I remember. Coming from the a mountainous area in Northern Vietnam, I didn’t see lion dance during Tet, I didn’t see red couplets during Tet either. We celebrate Tet in our own unique way with our own type of cuisine. Living abroad has helped me recall all of these memories and reinforce the uniqueness in my local culture. If I hadn’t come to Sydney, I would have never treasured the specialty about Tet that much.

One of the questions I get asked every year when calling my relatives on Tet is “Have you forgotten Tet yet?”, how could I forget a tradition that I repeatedly follow every year in a very specific order for 24 years? The fact that I have just listed thoroughly what I know about Tet has already proved I haven’t forgotten a single thing. Our adult minds would work better than we thought, wouldn’t they?

I’ve asked few of my friends who are studying oversea, whether they miss home or not. The common answer is they don’t really miss home but they wish to be physically home with their family. So I guess next time if I had a chance to ask an expat about Tet, instead of asking them “Do you miss home?” I would prefer to ask them “Do you wish to be home right now?”

My 2021 in review

Last year seemed to be the most unproductive year of my life. I finished study in December 2020 and spent 2 months afterward looking for an office job. I got one but then I was caught up into it and I really didn’t have a solid answer for what I did for the rest of the time. It sounds like I have waisted my year so much but I was wrong. Looking back, I did achieve some invisible milestones that have had great impacts on my life.

Thinking transformation

Last year I spent a surprised amount of time thinking. What did I think about? It’s hard for me to tell you now but I always felt things were wrong or shouldn’t be the way I thought It should be. Yea, that sounds vague. Let me tell you few things I have learnt from this absurd amount of thinking.

• Fear: I have so much fear. It’s funny to say it out loud because I was fearful even talking about it. Fear silently interrupted my decision making, my thoughts process and what I wanted to do. For example, I’ve wanted to build a blog since 2019 and I have had a couple of different websites for myself, but none of them worked for long. The reason behind it is I was so afraid of getting my posts published. I am not so proud of my writing and I felt embarrassed just thinking about how people would criticise it. Another example, I’ve always liked startups. I think many people like startups too, it can be a hype. But I don’t think I like startups that way. I love solving problems. I would be bored to dead if I have to spend hours working on something that was created by someone else. But, I couldn’t get myself moving into that path. I was terrified by not having a good idea, not having a founder, not having enough skills and knowledge. I fear of being a boring person, not hanging out with friends enough, or not making enough money.

• Being introspective: I think a lot, but most of the time I think about stuff in retrospective. I’d like to find the root of the story, why it happened that way and why I didn’t do it differently. You might say well it has passed, what’s point of being reiterating it again. Well it’s just how my brain works.

• Still fighting my monkey mind: while being introspective definitely helps me form my thinking process, it does trigger my monkey mind. I constantly found myself rehearsing a conversation with … myself. If you haven’t experienced it, you are lucky. Rumination drained me so much. I often felt exhausted because my mind was too active all the time. Sometimes I had trouble getting sleep because my mind couldn’t stop thinking. It sounds like I am telling you all the negativities in my life but I am not. These are my realisation for the year and I will work on them.

Career path and my life-long goals

From last year, I’ve wanted to be free from office work more than ever. I am saying that not because I hate my current job. I love it. I have a supportive and opened working environment. I have enough room for self-development and contribution. But deep down, I always know that the job is not for me. I would trade anything to work for myself or run my own company and that thought only gets stronger and stronger everyday.

I also know what kind of lifestyle would suit me the most. In an ideal scenario, I would like to live in a farm with chicken, ducks, horses, fruit trees and vegetable. While I can take care of my little farm, I can still work online, have a source of passive income and can do whatever I want with my time.

Reading

Last year, I didn’t read a lot of books but I read a huge amount of blog posts, to be more exact high quality blog posts. How do I know if these blogs are high quality, well, they are highly successful people and they write for the love of writing, not for the money. Their posts have either shifted my thinking or directed me to other valuable sources that help transform my life. The blogs from Paul Graham, Nat Eliason, or Tim Urban also have influenced my writing style in a very good way. If I usually felt cringe whenever I wrote something before, I have overcome it now and felt much more comfortable writing pages without feeling like I am a fraud. It doesn’t mean I am good at writing though. I just have a leverage to keep learning writing and practice the craft of writing in my own way.