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Run with Anis

April 21, 2022 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Weather: Sunny and mild

Comments:
Ran with Anis this morning. Been running a decent amount last two weeks, avg 20 miles a week which isnt much but its what I have time for now. 2 miles out, 2 miles back with the last two miles being broken up into 20 seconds on 40 seconds off intervals. Nothing painful just to get the legs moving. Omg it feels so nice to start actually being decent at running again. I'm already starting to catch whiffs of feeling smooth and powerful even if I cant keep it up for very long at all. I'm 75% sure I will do a marathon this summer with Anis. Very much looking forward to it

Talking with Anis was very nice. He is such a kind, mature, thoughtful person and I'm so glad he's in my life. We talked about how me and Aidan made a pretty cutthroat atmosphere when we were on the rowing team, and how the coaches were too timid to check us. I had no idea he thought it was toxic, but that's mainly because me and Aidan absolutely loved that atmosphere, and as stated before, people were too meek to call it out. Id like to think that I have figured it out more, as I had a really good experience coaching and mentoring students at my robotics team, and we had a super laid back and fun atmosphere, even when everyone was super passionate. I'd also like to think as long as I can control the part of me that is competitive, it will take me very far. I just enjoy the dogfight atmosphere way to much to give it up. Who knows.

I think the problem I've been thinking about that relates back to the team atmosphere is how do you balance ego and superego. I see this as what you are and where you are going. Since ego is impulse, emotion, passion, I see this as very much "Where you are" so to speak. Living purely through ego is to entirely live in the moment, carried by whatever interests you in the moment, with no long term goals. I identify much more with this. Then there is superego, that plans, has goals, is the self aware part, and makes change. This is "Where you are going"

However, I think such a strict dichotomy is completely arbitrary in the first place, but when describing things, it can be very helpful to discretize and abstractify so it can be understood by others. I've mentioned it before but if it were to be described mathematically you could write it down as an infinite differential equation, with the each portion of the brain describing one coefficient per term. In this way, you can absolutely describe all levels of conciousness. I like this theory enough to subscribe to it. I think some people could see life as an infinite Taylor series, but I think this is a terrible analogy because it doesn't account for self awareness. What I mean by this is that life is 2nd order chaotic - and fundamentally different than natural processes such as the weather. Weather can be predicted using an infinitely long polynomial, and with sufficient computing power, it will be perfectly predictable (Assuming of course that humans have no influence over the climate, which we know is false.) 2nd order chaotic means that any prediction will influence that outcome. Think the stock market. This is why, even with infinite computing power, the stock market will and will forever be, fundamentally, pure chance. Using a polynomial to predict life, for this reason, is impossible, for it will react to any predictions. However, the past can be described using a polynomial, because it has already happened and there is no more pure chance. In order to account for that reaction, you have to instead use a differential equation, which takes this into account. This can be seen with the covid predicting papers that came out, that used a many-term differential equation.

With that out of the way, I still have the struggle of determining ego vs superego and what to listen to. That is, understanding what is wrong with me but also knowing when to just be myself whatever that is. Is it better to try to control your fate or to simply let fate happen? Or is it better to do whatever you want and not give a shit about fate. IDK.

I should run more and be nice to people in my life, I might be overcomplicating it.