---
title: '2025 May Thought Notes'
ShowRssButtonInSectionTermList: true
date: 2025-05-31T23:59:59+08:00
draft : false
showtoc: true
weight: 1
tocopen: true
type: posts
author: ["Xinwei Xiong", "Me"]
keywords: []
tags:
  - Blog
  - Monthly Notes
  - Personal Reflection
  -  Mid-year Insights
  - Creative Thinking
categories:
  - Growth
description: >
    May 2025 monthly reflection - exploring mid-year insights, creative breakthroughs, and the evolving landscape of personal and professional growth in the AI era.
tldr:
  - "In the AI era, frontend has become the main value delivery battlefield as AI decouples intelligence from backend services, enabling rapid MVP development for independent developers."
  - "Breaking free from familiar pain and embracing unknown uncertainty requires conscious choice, supported by metacognition and understanding how perception shapes reality."
  - "Authentic growth depends on balancing intuitive wisdom with rational thinking, driven by inspiration rather than desperation, grounded in ordinary time and repeated action over years."
---

# May 2025 Thought Notes

## AI-Era Independent Development: Frontend as the Main Battlefield for Value Delivery

> May 1, 2025 - 10:22:06
> In the AI era, the battlefield of independent development is shifting toward the frontend.

**The transformation is evident:**
- **Backend Simplification**: AI models turn core services into universal capabilities, lowering technical barriers in backend development. SaaS and PaaS providers encapsulate vast foundational capabilities that developers can directly invoke.
- **Frontend as Value Delivery Nexus**: The frontend is closest to users, making it easier to focus on MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and single-person product loops. Using a tech stack like Next.js / Tailwind / Firebase / Vercel enables full-stack delivery and rapid validation of the "function → value → growth" chain.
- **From "Building" to "Integration"**: Databases, permissions, storage, and model calls are becoming platformized (such as Supabase, LangChain, Replicate). Independent developers no longer need to write backend from scratch—they just need to "integrate."

AI decouples "intelligence" from the backend, making the frontend the true battlefield where users are closest, changes are most significant, and value is most concentrated.

`#TechReflection/IndependentDev`

## Rather Endure Familiar Pain Than Embrace the Unknown

> May 3, 2025 - 16:35:33
> Out of fear of the unknown, people are more willing to endure familiar pain.

This reflects a deep-seated human tendency to prefer familiarity, even when it's not optimal. Known pain feels more controllable and manageable than the uncertainty that comes with change. **This psychological mechanism explains why many people stay in unsatisfying jobs, relationships, or situations—not because they're objectively better, but because they're predictable.**

Understanding this bias can help us make more conscious choices about when to embrace beneficial uncertainty versus when to accept productive stability.

`#SelfObservation/PsychologicalMechanisms`

## Know Others, Wisdom; Know Yourself, Enlightenment

> May 3, 2025 - 16:45:22
> Most people measure the world through their own thoughts and perspectives. The meaning we assign to things ultimately determines our feelings about them.

This illustrates how values shape reality. The same work can be a source of joy for some and drudgery for others. **The difference isn't in the work itself, but in the mental frameworks and meaning-making systems we apply.**

Consider this reflective question: "If I no longer had the thought 'I hate work,' what kind of person would I become?"

Many never engage in such reflection. Through metacognition, we can understand the very existence of emotions. When angry, consider the reasons and nature of that anger—record it objectively, and the problem might resolve itself.

**Practical application**: When facing challenging situations, first examine your interpretative framework before trying to change the external circumstances.

`#SelfObservation/SelfAwareness`

## The Brain for Survival, The Mind for Happiness

> May 3, 2025 - 16:56:10
> The brain's complex computational abilities primarily serve evolutionary needs for survival and safety. But for the mind's joy and happiness, it seems powerless.

**Understanding this distinction is crucial:**
- **The brain's task**: Maintain survival and process threats
- **Consciousness's task**: Create fulfillment and meaning

If we want freedom, joy, peace, and inner abundance, we can't completely follow the brain's commands or settle for mere bodily survival. We need to break these limitations and pursue higher levels of psychological well-being.

This explains why purely rational approaches to happiness often fail—they're using survival-oriented systems to address fulfillment-oriented needs.

`#SelfObservation/HumanNature`

## The Interplay Between Thoughts and Reflections

> May 3, 2025 - 17:20:11
> Thoughts are psychologically driven—the raw material for constructing our sense of time and the foundation of all experience. We cannot control their emergence; they form spontaneously.

**The crucial distinction:**
- **Thoughts (Ideas)**: Spontaneous, automatic, energy-free
- **Reflections (Thinking)**: Deliberate processing requiring active brain engagement and energy consumption

**This creates an interesting paradox**: Thinking is difficult (people would rather endure pain than think actively), yet thinking can also be the source of suffering. Optimistic attitudes often aren't reasoned conclusions but more instinctive, intuitive states.

**The key insight**: Our first reaction to situations—that immediate, intuitive response—might be closest to truth, rather than subsequent rational or emotional processing.

However, this doesn't diminish thinking's importance. Growth requires thinking; it's how we transcend intuition and surface-level understanding to discover what we truly want.

**The balance**: Finding equilibrium between "stopping thought" and "active thinking."

`#SelfObservation/CognitiveModes`

## Experience: Breaking Through Fear

> May 3, 2025 - 17:39:11
> Hiking, nomadic living, socializing... If humans could learn one thing to change the world, it would be to stop being afraid of experience.

**Universal human fears that limit growth:**
- Fear of failure and embarrassment
- Fear of the unknown and inconvenience
- Fear of judgment and social rejection

These fears trap us in comfort zones, preventing forward movement. Yet all growth and change hide behind the simple act of "trying."

**Modern examples**: Fear of "AI" and "programming" makes people retreat, resulting in self-imposed isolation and eventually being left behind by the times. Another type is fear of facing ourselves—afraid to admit mistakes, see our true desires, or be different from others.

**The liberation**: Stop cowering and bravely try, feel, and experience. Only then does life become genuinely interesting and meaningful.

`#SelfObservation/LifePhilosophy`

## Flow State: Restraint Without Thinking

> May 3, 2025 - 18:07:50
> "Anxiety is thinking without restraint; flow is restraint without thinking." —James Clear

**Personal observation**: I find it easier to enter flow states when slightly intoxicated or fatigued. This might relate to the Japanese concept of "mushin"—a state of consciousness with no thoughts, no resentment, no fear, reaching a state of "no-self."

**The neurological explanation:**
- **Intoxication**: The prefrontal cortex (responsible for planning and self-monitoring) is mildly suppressed, reducing internal criticism and interference
- **Fatigue**: The brain automatically screens out distractions to "conserve energy," concentrating attention on single tasks

While these states resemble flow, they're more accurately described as "narrowed attention" rather than optimal flow. **True high-quality flow** typically occurs in the morning when brain resources are abundant and the ability to inhibit distractions and regulate emotions is strongest.

This explains why artists sometimes need specific environments, music, or even a little alcohol to spark creative inspiration.

`#SelfObservation/PsychologicalStates`

## Two Sources of Goals: Inspiration and Desperation

> May 4, 2025 - 09:08:47
> Goals have two sources: triggered by inspiration or born from desperation. We should let inspiration trigger dreams, not let desperation create goals.

**How to distinguish them:**
- **Inspiration-based goals**: Born in a flash of insight, feeling natural and exciting
- **Desperation-based goals**: Result from prolonged thinking and anxiety, often feeling forced

**Example analysis**: Goals like "earn enough money to travel the world" usually serve as means to some motivation rather than ends themselves, often hiding inner feelings of inadequacy.

**The deeper principle**: We shouldn't create to achieve fulfillment, but because we feel fulfillment, we want to create and give without expecting returns.

**Self-reflection question**: If money, time, and others' opinions weren't issues, what would I truly want to do and create?

`#SelfObservation/GoalSetting`

## Trust Intuition, Listen to Inner Voice

> May 4, 2025 - 09:26:19
> I once rejected intuition because of rationality, thinking it wasn't precise enough. But seeking validation from the outside world often only brings opposition. True answers need to be found within.

**The power of intuition**: Stay loyal to your intuition, sixth sense, and inner wisdom, and life often presents unexpected miracles. Intuition might guide you to talk with strangers, opening friendships, or make that phone call when a friend needs it most.

**The courage required**: Don't let rationality suppress the heart. Have courage to follow intuition. To experience unprecedented scenery, you must dare to plunge into the unknown, let go of deliberation, and listen to your inner voice.

**Balance insight**: This doesn't mean abandoning rational thinking, but rather creating space for both analytical and intuitive wisdom to inform our decisions.

`#SelfObservation/SelfAwareness`

## The Myth of Constant Response

> May 6, 2025 - 10:07:12
> Is "responding to everything" really that hard to achieve? Why can't I do it? And why do I expect others to do it?

**The deeper questions**:
- When others don't respond, whose fault is it really?
- I don't think everything needs a response, but what if the other person needs it?
- I feel deliberate responses are stiff, but others seem angry at my silence
- I feel I'm not wrong, yet why does conflict arise?

**This reflects the complexity of human communication**: Different people have different needs for acknowledgment, validation, and connection. The challenge lies not in universal rules but in understanding and navigating these different relational styles.

`#SelfObservation/InterpersonalRelations`

## AI-Era Design Simplification Principles

> May 6, 2025 - 10:51:24
> In the AI era, many complex design processes can be simplified. For small teams, early stages need focus on only two core designs:

**1. Product Design**: Clarify user value and define core functions of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

**2. System Design**: Plan system modules, architecture, interfaces, and deployment solutions

**The streamlined process**: Interact these two components with AI, combine with business team's actual situation for design, then output a clear task list. This list can be decomposed into Product Features and Technical Tasks, managed using tools like GitHub Projects to establish a streamlined project process.

This approach leverages AI's analytical capabilities while maintaining human strategic oversight.

`#TechReflection/SoftwareEngineering`

## User Experience Value: The Art of Saving Articles

> May 7, 2025 - 09:37:45
> Exceptional user experience is crucial. For example, how to let users quickly save articles from WeChat official accounts is an extremely valuable entry point.

**Extended capabilities could include**:
- Expanding article series and collecting them
- Finding similar articles from the same official accounts
- Creating thematic collections and cross-referencing

This seemingly simple feature addresses a real pain point in content consumption and organization, demonstrating how AI can enhance rather than replace human curation.

`#TechReflection/ProductThinking`

## User Value First, Then Technical Implementation

> May 7, 2025 - 09:44:22
> No matter how good the technology, if it can't solve users' actual problems in convenient and effective ways, it's hard to succeed. Product development should start from user needs and overall experience, not from technology seeking applications.

**Wrong approach**: Develop cool AI technology first, then expect others to adapt existing products to it.

**Correct approach**:
1. **First think**: "What should this product (or user value) look like from beginning to end?" Envision complete user experience and product form first.
2. **Then consider**: "Where should we add AI technology to solve specific problems or enhance experience?" AI should be a tool to assist and optimize products, not the product itself.

**This principle prevents the common trap of "solution in search of a problem" that plagues many tech startups.**

`#TechReflection/ProductPhilosophy`

## Tracing Origins: Exploring Experiences Behind Viewpoints

> May 7, 2025 - 09:45:57
> When observing how others express viewpoints, a good method is "tracing origins." Others' viewpoints often stem from their personal experiences.

**What's fascinating**: I find myself more interested in others' experiences themselves, and how they distilled viewpoints from these experiences. Everyone has viewpoints, but experiences are valuable—especially firsthand experience, which forms unique thinking most effectively.

**This approach transforms conversations from mere opinion exchange to experience sharing, creating deeper understanding and connection.**

`#SelfObservation/LearningMethods`

## User-Centered Product Design Framework

> May 7, 2025 - 14:32:16
> At the current stage, product design still needs to adhere to user-centered perspectives.

**Background Analysis**:
1. **Users**: Who is our user persona?
2. **Goals**: What are their primary objectives?
3. **Pain Points**: What obstacles prevent them from achieving goals?

**Value Proposition**:
1. **Product**: What do we need to build to help users achieve goals?
2. **Pain Point Relief**: How does the product reduce user pain points?
3. **Benefit Creation**: How will the product create benefits for users?

**Objectives**: Break down the product into specific, achievable goals.

**Solutions**:
- **Core Features**: Main functionality to develop
- **Integration**: How the product integrates with other services
- **Alternatives**: Other solutions to consider
- **Constraints**: Limitation factors to note
- **Out-of-scope**: Features not to develop initially

**Feasibility Analysis**: Evaluate overall project feasibility.

`#TechReflection/ProductDesign`

## LingoWhale Deep Analysis: Summary-to-Original Mapping Mechanism

> May 8, 2025 - 14:38:33
> LingoWhale's foundation model service specializes in text summarization processing.

**The process flow**: First, clean, format, and intelligently chunk original text to handle length limitations while ensuring contextual coherence. Then, the foundation model generates summaries based on text type and length.

**The core "original-summary mapping" mechanism** likely utilizes Transformer attention weights. Summary generation includes extractive (using original sentences directly) and abstractive (generating new sentences). Extractive summaries are easier to map, while abstractive summaries require pre-trained models to access and display relevance weights with original text parts when generating each word.

**Technical implementation**: Models like BERTSUM, T5, BART from Hugging Face can access these weights by setting `output_attentions=True`, enabling precise mapping between summaries and originals.

`#TechReflection/TechnicalAnalysis`

## LingoWhale's Mapping: Attention Weights or Business Logic?

> May 8, 2025 - 15:42:09
> Setting aside RAG, LingoWhale-8B's model definition file `modeling_lingowhale.py` defines attention layers that could theoretically extract attention weights during summary generation for original text mapping.

**But the question remains**: Could this capability also be achieved through RAG? Or even through clever business logic at the application layer to achieve good mapping effects?

**This raises interesting questions about the trade-offs between model-level sophistication and application-level ingenuity in AI system design.**

`#TechReflection/TechnicalInquiry`

## Human Nature Observations: Before and After Reform

> May 8, 2025 - 17:55:50
> Reading "Gannan Chronicles" and "Ten Years of One Hundred People," I feel human nature has never changed. But why do we seem better able to understand post-reform human evil, yet find it hard to tolerate and understand pre-reform evil?

**Human nature constants**:
- Desire for better life (self-interest)
- Fear of losing resources and status (survival instinct)
- Pursuit of fairness while not refusing privilege (internal contradiction)
- Moral fragility when facing temptation

**Perhaps the difference**: Extreme survival environments more easily amplify human evil. Actions then were more driven by survival instinct rather than choice.

`#SelfObservation/HumanNature`

## Deep Reflections on Reform and Opening

> May 8, 2025 - 20:20:36
> Reform and Opening brought economic miracles and dramatically changed people's ideological concepts, making thinking no longer tend toward uniformity.

This represents economic miracles while exposing fundamental tension between economic liberalization and political control. Limited political reform and subsequent emphasis on "stability" as prerequisite for economic progress reflect this tension.

**Chinese society experienced rapid transition from ideological fervor to material emphasis**—this dramatic social transformation is unique in the world.

`#WorldView/HistoricalReflection`

## WeChat Reading MCP: Potential for Personal Knowledge Graphs

> May 9, 2025 - 10:30:44
> If WeChat Reading's MCP (Mini Program) could open APIs for accessing book information, details, especially reading notes, it would be extremely valuable.

**The potential**: Through APIs, AI could easily process and integrate users' reading notes, quickly generating structured note summaries. In this process, humans would only need to filter and confirm information, while the work of integrating notes into knowledge frameworks and knowledge maps could be completely handed over to AI.

**This represents a shift from individual note-taking to AI-assisted knowledge synthesis, potentially revolutionizing how we process and retain information from books.**

`#TechReflection/ProductThinking`

## Scaling Law Curve Left-Shift: Lower Cost AI Training

> May 9, 2025 - 13:26:00
> The cutting-edge trend in AI infrastructure is "left-shifting the Scaling Law curve"—achieving the same or better model effects with lower parameters, computing power, or costs.

**Future implications**:
1. **Lower inference costs** will drive more application-driven innovation
2. **Improved efficiency** might actually increase total demand due to the Jevons paradox

Therefore, for computing infrastructure companies, competition remains fierce.

**This trend suggests we're moving toward more efficient AI rather than simply more powerful AI, which could democratize access to AI capabilities.**

`#TechReflection/AITechnology`

## Future Programming: Moving Toward Asynchronous Interaction

> May 9, 2025 - 13:30:32
> AI is becoming more like a qualified engineer, with continuously improving engineering capabilities and sustained work capacity.

**Future programming will increasingly manifest as asynchronous interaction**:
- By 2027, AI might independently complete 1-hour tasks
- By 2030, this time might extend to 1 day

**This shift changes the programmer's role from direct code implementation to strategic oversight and quality assurance of AI-generated solutions.**

`#TechReflection/AITrends`

## Intelligent Hiding: The Philosophy of Simple Design

> May 10, 2025 - 13:49:02
> Product core functionality should pursue simplicity. We need to think about how to make functions simpler, not more complex. The great way is simple, like ChatGPT—a simple chat interface can complete over 80% of tasks.

**The principle**: Too many features increase users' cognitive burden. Good design should achieve "intelligent hiding," allowing users to get started without additional learning.

**This reflects a broader design philosophy**: sophistication should be hidden beneath simplicity, not displayed through complexity.

`#TechReflection/ProductDesign`

## Those Who Experience Suffering Better Understand Happiness

> May 10, 2025 - 20:31:10
> People who have experienced hardship often better appreciate the precious nature of happiness and know how to cherish present possessions.

This relates to inner satisfaction. I'm very happy now because I'm satisfied with the present, living the life I want to live and doing what I want to do.

**How wonderful this is.**

`#SelfObservation/LifeInsights`

## Inheritance: The Unchanging Pursuit of Human Nature

> May 11, 2025 - 09:13:23
> Technology changes rapidly; high-rise buildings give us the illusion that the world is completely different. Values are changing: grandpa's generation emphasized "collective, patience," parents' generation emphasized "struggle, success," our generation focuses more on "individual, freedom, meaning."

**But what remains unchanged?**

We still yearn to break free from our family origins like our parents' generation; our search for love, belonging, and meaning has only transformed in form, never stopped.

Every generation has its own troubles and uses its own methods to rebel against the previous generation's concepts. But that unyielding courage toward life, breaking tradition, and pursuing happiness—these qualities are universal.

**Human nature seems always to pursue what we don't have while ignoring the beauty we already possess.**

`#WorldView/GenerationalObservation`

## The Essence of Generational Conflict: Same Struggles in Different Worlds

> May 11, 2025 - 09:33:07
> Each generation has its own troubles and missions. But essentially, they are "the same type of people" struggling in different worlds.

Every generation challenges their era's "order" in their own way. Our parents broke feudal thinking; our generation pursues freedom and independence. It seems incomprehensible, but we're actually repeating similar resistance—just different scripts and stages.

**Understanding generational differences**: The key isn't what they did, but why they did it.

**Criticizing the past is meaningless**. I think I'm "smarter" only because I'm closer to today.

**Each generation reconstructs definitions of "happiness" and "success":**
- **Grandpa's happiness**: Living with dignity, having food, having someone to rely on
- **Parents' happiness**: Success, house and car, children achieving success  
- **My happiness**: Among too many choices, becoming who I like, cherishing the present

**The definition of happiness evolved from "survival" to "success" to today's "authenticity."**

`#WorldView/GenerationalObservation`

## Breaking Traditions Disguised as "Natural"

> May 11, 2025 - 09:43:42
> Traditional concepts often disguise themselves as "natural," using phrases like "should," "must," "you'll understand later" to replicate the previous generation's fate onto the next, projecting unfulfilled expectations outward.

Like sea women hoping the next generation also becomes sea women, parents who couldn't escape their fate subconsciously require children to repeat it to make their "sacrifice" seem meaningful:

- "I suffered through this, you must endure too" → Rationalizing suppression
- "Girls should be obedient and family-oriented" → Internalizing gender roles as norms
- "Get a civil service job for stability" → Packaging social fear as "for your good"
- "I didn't raise you to do whatever you want" → Viewing children as tools for self-continuation rather than independent lives

`#WorldView/SocialObservation`

## Nostalgia: What We Miss and Flee Are Past Versions of Ourselves

> May 11, 2025 - 09:50:11
> Perhaps one day, we will return to the hometown we once desperately wanted to escape. Memories resurface in fragments, yet we can never truly enter again.

If I had known that spring would be the spring of my life, I would have lived more fully.

**What we love, hate, want to return to, or leave behind ultimately comes down to that self needing acceptance or transcendence.** Youth yearns for distance; old age misses the journey home. Saying goodbye to the past is actually accepting ourselves.

**"If we're destined to part, what's the meaning of meeting?"**
**"The meaning of meeting is that the part of me changed by you stays with me forever, replacing you."**

**So separation isn't fracture, but internalization. This is the true meaning of "ichigo ichie" and "mono no aware."**

`#SelfObservation/EmotionalExperience`

## War Warning: Those Who Forget Suffering Will Repeat It

> May 11, 2025 - 10:39:23
> Politics is merciless. Those who forget the history of suffering will become victims of the next suffering.

Those who have never cried in the deep night are not qualified to talk about life.

Love is seeing your responsibility and giving in others' needs.

*Reference: Chai Jing's dialogue with survivors of the Chinese Civil War*

`#WorldView/HistoricalReflection`

## Perception Constructs Reality: Suffering Stems from Judgment, Not Facts

> May 11, 2025 - 11:01:49
> Nothing is absolutely real; there are only things we consider "true." Everything you experience is actually your interpretation of the world. The world isn't objectively real but constructed by our perceptions.

**Therefore, suffering doesn't stem from things themselves but from our judgments about things.**

The more we resist, the more things persist; the more we want control, the more easily we're controlled. **True freedom isn't doing whatever we want, but having the power not to be driven by inner impulses when facing them.**

Metacognition helps us identify these impulses and have the ability to balance them. Freedom isn't "following feelings" but "knowing you have feelings but can still decide how to proceed."

`#SelfObservation/CognitiveModes`

## Children Continue Growing in Parents' Hearts

> May 11, 2025 - 20:34:32
> The trauma of losing a child is often the deepest and hardest to recover from. Repeated longing, dreams, and the tearing upon waking, accompanied by endless guilt, self-blame, and helplessness.

**In reality, the child's growth stopped. But in parents' hearts, they constantly imagine, remember, even "construct" the life trajectory the child couldn't experience**: "If he/she were still here, how old would they be now? What would they be doing?"

This is both emotional continuation and a way of mourning.

**Personal reflection**: The year I was born, my second aunt's only son died in an accident. Since then, she was especially good to me. No matter what trouble I caused, she always forgave me.

`#SelfObservation/EmotionalExperience`

## Self-Consistency Independent of Any Identity

> May 12, 2025 - 10:28:20
> Society needs labels to identify and classify, but once you start depending on these labels, you start living in others' expectations. Identity brings false certainty; when these things waver, we panic: without these, what do I have?

**Who you are isn't the title on your business card, but that "self" you can calmly exist as after losing all labels.** Because we fear losing social definitions, we lack courage to act.

**Ask yourself**: If today you lost all titles, income, and networks, who would you still be? Would you prefer others see the complete you or your labels?

**My answer**: I would continue creating, continue exploring and enjoying this world.

`#SelfObservation/SelfIdentity`

## Authenticity: Awareness, Honesty, and Consistency

> May 12, 2025 - 10:47:39
> I increasingly crave "authenticity," yet can't accurately describe it at once.

**It's not simply "telling truth" or "being yourself," but more about**: I know my current real feelings, motivations, limitations, and desires, neither denying nor beautifying them.

**Three components**:
1. **Awareness**: What am I doing? Why am I doing this? Do I really want this?
2. **Honesty**: I don't hide or pretend to be an "ideal person"
3. **Consistency**: My language, choices, and inner state align as much as possible

**The goal**: Step away from performance and make choices truly belonging to yourself. Exit from "how I hope others see me" and gradually turn toward "what I hope to be like in my heart."

`#SelfObservation/SelfAwareness`

## Buffett's Investment Wisdom and Life Philosophy

> May 12, 2025 - 18:46:42
> Opportunities don't appear on schedule. Maintaining sufficient cash is for being able to act quickly when the market presents major opportunities. Buffett's metaphor: "The possibility of opportunities appearing tomorrow is negligible, but the probability within five years isn't low."

**Key Points Summary**:

1. **Successor**: Abel is ready to take over as CEO
2. **Tariff Issues**: Trade shouldn't be used as a weapon
3. **US Stock Volatility**: Recent declines are nothing compared to historical crashes
4. **Artificial Intelligence**: Won't make all investments around AI; leave choices to those who understand better
5. **Japanese Market**: Won't sell a single share; won't for the next 10 years either
6. **Cash Reserves**: I made a lot of money because I never went all-in
7. **Advice for Young People**: Surround yourself with people better than you; do work you love, don't worry too much about initial salary

`#TechReflection/InvestmentPhilosophy`

## The Essence of Relationships is Value Exchange

> May 14, 2025 - 18:23:48
> The essence of relationships is value exchange, including material value, emotional value, and spiritual value.

The reason humans develop moral sense stems from reflection on human selfishness.

Therefore, staying clear-headed in relationships and distinguishing between interests and emotions is very necessary. We don't deny that great, selfless feelings exist in the world, but if we view this sacred emotion as the complete truth of human nature, we might move further from truth.

**This perspective doesn't diminish love but provides a more realistic foundation for understanding and building sustainable relationships.**

`#SelfObservation/InterpersonalRelations`

## Magnified Fears: The Granularity of Relationships

> May 16, 2025 - 20:35:32
> Sometimes I feel that when you first meet someone, it's like looking at a painting from afar—it seems beautiful and simple. But once you get close, the whole world changes. It's not that the person changed; it's that I see more things—all those details, small flaws, even some deeply hidden complex emotions all emerge.

This is like adjusting camera focus. From afar, the image is blurred but comfortable; up close, it's clear but chaotic. You discover others aren't just what you thought they were—they have many sides, sometimes even they don't fully understand themselves.

**Philosophically, this is like choosing the resolution for viewing the world.** Stay distant, live easily; get close, truth multiplies but becomes more mentally taxing. Once you zoom in, you can't go back. You must accept that they're not perfect, I'm not perfect, everyone's a tangled mess, then try to find some harmony within this tangle.

**Intimacy is quite contradictory.** The closer you get, the more complex simple relationships become. But without getting close, you stay forever on the surface. True relationships might be daring to go deep, knowing the water underneath isn't so clear.

`#SelfObservation/InterpersonalRelations`

## Japanese Anime: Modern People's Spiritual Refuge

> May 16, 2025 - 20:37:24
> Japanese anime has become a bearer of modern people's psychological gaps.

**On one hand**, economic downturns need spiritual energy supplements; culture is an excellent container. **On the other hand**, fictional worlds fill the spiritual coordinates and emotional needs lost in the real world. People want emotional value without paying the price—anime becomes an excellent choice.

**It serves as**:
- A collective psychological compensation mechanism (escape and repair from failed reality)
- An alternative spiritual life system  
- A "post-industrial society" aesthetic expression (cyberpunk, metaverse, moe culture)

**Cultural foundation**: The secular aesthetic of Confucian, Buddhist, and Taoist fusion allows "fiction" to carry "reality." The feeling of beauty isn't vigorous but gently melancholic and fleeting. Those tiny beauties in life and the tiny happiness they generate are psychological medicine against heavy reality.

`#WorldView/CulturalObservation`

## Emotional Transfer: How We Transfer Anxiety to Others

> May 17, 2025 - 16:56:50
> There's a type of person whose distrust and insecurity from childhood environments breeds strong control desires, transferring inner anxiety to people around them.

**The essence of emotional transfer**: Projecting inner anxiety and fear externally, trying to feel better by changing others. This pattern is too common in human nature—like getting angry at family when anxious, or holding tighter when afraid of loss.

**Behind this lies humanity's fundamental pursuit of security, belonging, and self-actualization.**

Ironically, security obtained through control is false because it's built on others' lack of freedom, precisely blocking the path to self-actualization. True growth requires freedom and trust.

**Human nature is so complex and fragile**—we all fear injury, but the more we fear, the tighter we grip; the tighter we grip, the more we hurt, finally cornering both ourselves and others. True balance is learning to accept our imperfections and daring to believe the world isn't so dangerous, even if we occasionally stumble.

`#SelfObservation/PsychologicalMechanisms`

## Growth's Essence: Ordinary as Foundation, Action as Answer

> May 31, 2025 - 20:19:45
> I previously saw a formula: Growth Essence = (Joy + Sorrow) / Ordinary. At first glance I agreed because I don't like blandness—uncertain experiences are far more meaningful than repetitive stability.

**But later I wondered**: Is "ordinary" really unimportant? Pain awakens, joy inspires creation. But looking at an entire life, how many ups and downs are there really? We just remember changes more deeply.

**True growth often happens precisely in "ordinary" times.** This slowness is more like hiking—one step at a time, solid ground is the foundation.

**Growth needs emotional experience but also time precipitation.** Perhaps a better formula is:
**Growth ≈ (Awareness × Action) × Time**

`#SelfObservation/Growth`

---

*This collection of thoughts from May 2025 reflects a month of deep introspection about AI's impact on work and creativity, the nature of human relationships, and the ongoing journey of personal growth. Each reflection captures moments of clarity and questioning that contribute to a broader understanding of living authentically in an rapidly changing world.*