This week I received bad news from both of my parents. My mom’s sister, my aunt, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease a couple of years ago. She had been on medications but they had stopped working and the symptoms have gotten worse. My mom has been predictably worried sick and stressed out by the situation. Managing any disease is stressful, and degenerative disease can be especially emotionally cruel. It’s hard for the patient to slowly and painfully lose her basic abilities, and heartbreaking for those close to her to watch. My mom is currently looking for the best treatments possible for my aunt, but given various factors, it’s not an easy task.

Earlier this week I also got a call from my dad, who had just recently returned from China. The first thing he told me was that my great-grandmother’s health has suddenly deteriorated. They found problems with several of her organs; they have no idea how long she has left. My great-grandmother is 95. My dad’s mother had died when he was only a teenager, and he and his sisters were mostly raised by their grandmother. To my dad and my aunts, my great-grandmother is practically their mother. Even though my great-grandmother has lived a relatively good and long life, saying goodbye to a loved one is never easy.

These two incidents have led me to reflect quite a bit on the meaning of family. I have always somewhat struggled with the significance of family. When I was younger, I took its importance as given, because that’s just what I was told. Family always came first; of course my parents loved me and I loved them in return. What bothered me, however, was this failed to explain how I was particularly close to some members of my family, while not at all to the rest. And then there were the friends that I loved almost as much as I loved my family, if not equally. So mere blood relations did not seem like a reasonable explanation for the significance of these relationships. For a while, I thought the depth of a relationship and love was only dependent on how the people within that relationship acted, and had nothing to do with biology. I think I still stand by this view. The difference is I have come to understand one cannot separate love and relationships from their contexts, and being a family (through biology, marriage, parenthood, etc.) is perhaps one of most powerful contexts there is for fostering love.

The context of family, through various ways, makes the relationships formed within it irreplaceable. I used to think that this was because of the biological connections, but that is actually not quite true. The biological argument neglects family relationships involving adopted children and even spouses. Biology does play a roll in the parent-child bonding process, but it does not fully explain the love that motivates parents to do almost anything for their children’s well being. That love is better explained by the complete dependency a child has when it arrives in the world. That is how parents’ lives are forever changed with the arrival of a child. It is often the first incidence when an individual will be motivated to give everything they have to another human being, around the clock, endlessly. This enormous amount of giving, I believe, is what forms the special bond between a parent and a child.

Another common family relationship is that of siblings. I can only speak to this based on my observations of other people with siblings. So correct me if what I am about to write is incorrect. I suspect the bond between siblings is one of shared experiences and shared background. To share your childhood in this most intimate way is not an insignificant thing. I imagine it to be akin to the building of close friendships (i.e. think college friendships fostered between dorm-mates), and then elevate it by ten folds. It is through this sharing of parents, house, rooms, meals, possessions, and a myriad of experiences growing up, that the siblings’ identities inevitably intertwine and an irreplaceable bond is formed.

Family relationships are interesting to me because unlike friendships and romantic relationships, they have very little if anything to do with our temperaments, personalities, and interests. Now I do think those things matter, and having compatibility in those aspects usually mean closer relationships even among family members. However, I would postulate that the strength of familial bonds is independent of those things. From my reflections of family relationships, I have come to realize a few things about love. Circumstances, whether that’s biology or compatibility, provide the initial desires to engage in a set of actions. The accumulation of these actions is what becomes love. Love is the summation of giving and sharing.

Life is about fighting, appreciating, learning, relaxing, and contemplating. It’s a fine balance of the proactive, interactive, restorative, and meditative. It’s important to be proactive by fighting for your dreams and goals, by seeking out new experiences to expand your horizon, by learning a little bit more about yourself and the world every day. It’s important to be interactive by nurturing relationships and bonds with the people we care about, by understanding and learning how we are connected to the world near and far. It’s important to engage in the restorative by nurturing our bodies and souls, by protecting our greatest assets, by maintaining good health and spirit. It’s important to engage in the meditative by asking the hard questions, by reflecting on our thoughts, feelings, and actions, by probing for truths and insights.

2014 was a year of many thing. So let’s start from the beginning…

2014 was a year of moving.

I moved three times within the first half of the year: from St. Louis to NYC, from midtown west to the financial district, and then from NYC to Chicago. Every time was stressful as moving is inevitably, and every time I learned a little more about myself, life, and those around me. Like every other tough situation in life, it can bring out the best and worst in us.

2014 was a year of new beginnings.

At the very beginning of the year I was admitted to the New York bar, and thus in at least one way, began my life officially as a lawyer. I soon learned the respect that being a lawyer garners, even if I am not practicing (yet). Having been surrounded by fellow law students for the previous 3.5 years, I had become so jaded that I had forgotten almost all the positives of this profession.

I started my first full time job and moved into my very first apartment in July. The first couple of months were filled with the excitement of decorating my very own place and learning everything about my new job. There were the expected challenges. I found decorating a home can be difficult given my specific tastes, limited budget, and the lack of car and help. On the other hand, staying awake for a full nine hours at work was also painful and sometimes impossible.

2014 was a year of friendship.

They say a place like New York City can feel incredibly lonely despite having millions of people. Yet I can’t help but feel I was incredibly lucky because that was seldom a feeling I had. For the brief six months (and it was all too brief) that I had in New York, I was surrounded by friends, both new and old. Because of them, I always had a reason to laugh, to smile, to get up and discover the amazing city that I lived in. With them, I shared countless memories of brunches, dinners, museums, ballet performance, coffee shops, roof tops, afternoon teas, soup dumplings, ramens, and endless conversations on everything and anything.

They say starting a life in a new city can be tough, but despite all the challenges of moving, my transition to life in Chicago has been rather smooth. My first couple of months were filled with visits from friends and family.

2014 was a year of many things; above all, it was a year of discovery.

One of my friends posted this question on her FB status: “In matters of love.. Should you follow your heart or your head?” That’s a good question because anyone who has been in love have probably wondered about it at some point. The question got me thinking, again:

First of all, how many real answers can there be to this question?

I have seen a number of responses, including: “your heart/feelings/gut”, “the head/mind/reason/logic”, and “both”. Let me begin by saying that “both” is not really answering the question. I think I know what people mean when they say “both.” They are most likely trying to express that listening to both one’s reasons and feelings is important when pondering about love. That is true. However, the question as stated above was not “should you listen to your heart or your head.” The verb in question here is follow, not listen. The difference is essential because while one you can listen to any number of things or people, one can only really follow one. The action of following dictates choosing one direction. While it is not explicitly stated in the question, there is an implicit assumption that the dilemma involves the heart and the head dictating different directions. Therefore, you must choose one. The heart or the head, but not both.

My answer: the heart.

As I mentioned above, I think it is important to listen to both your heart and your head. Feelings and reasons are both important in matters of love. However, when they tell us different things, and they often will, which do should we follow? I say follow your heart, and this is why:

Following your heart means making your decision based on how you feel. At first glance, it might seem strange for someone like me (an economist, philosopher, and lawyer) to favor feelings over reason and rationality. After all, feelings can be fickle and unpredictable. How can it ever be wise to make decisions on something so unreliable, so irrational? The short answer is, love is very much about feelings. I often say that as much as I love logic and reason, and as much as my life is dictated by them, they fall terribly short when it comes to love. Love isn’t really about reason. Love defies logic. And that is why people can ponder about love for centuries and never get tired of it. Because love defies reason, it is why there will never be a simple and clear cut answer. It will always be a bit ambiguous, amorphous, and impossible to explain fully.

However, that is not to say reason has no place in love. If one abandons reason completely, one will very likely become mad. So it’s still important to listen to reason. Reason can be there to temper the madness of all those intense feelings. But why not follow it then? It comes down to this: Your heart/feelings are indisputable, but your head/reasons might be wrong.

What do I mean by that? Feelings are indisputable because they are not for debate. You can’t argue about someone’s feelings (some might try, but there is no real winner in that argument, ever.). They simply are. If you are happy, you are happy. If you are angry, you are angry. Someone might want to argue and disagree with you, but that’s both arrogant and moot. On the other hand, your head is there to tell you what you should do, or to predict what might happen. When one ventures into the realms of normative and predicative statements, there is always room for debate, and room for errors. What your head is trying to tell you is how you might feel sometimes in the future, but your head can be wrong. What your heart is telling you is how you are feeling in the moment, and it is indisputable.

Because I’m risk averse, I would rather follow something that I know to be true (albeit just for the present), then to trust something that might be wrong (even if it purports to be more long-term oriented). After all, what is the point of long-term thinking if the room for error is so high? To put it another way, I rather have $100 today, then $1000 a year from now, if the probability of getting that $1000 is very low (say less than 50%, which yields an expected return of $500. I’m ignoring discount rate for the sake of simplicity). You might have noticed that there is a certain degree of irony in my conclusion. I chose to follow the heart because I’m ultimately risk averse, whereas normally people might expect the risk-averse to follow the head.

Hang out with friends

Movies to watch:

• The Descendants
• Hugo
• My week with Marilyn
• Carnage

Last minute shopping for China

Ice skating??