BRONZE FROG

Category: Understanding the World

  • We’re Stuck in Monkey Loops

    We’re Stuck in Monkey Loops

    It’s definitely not the case that we’re very good at understanding what our brain and body actually want. There are too many signals coming at us from all directions, both inside and outside ourselves. Learning to consistently Fourier transform that constant stream of input is already difficult, and teasing out actual cause and effect is even harder. To make things more complicated, what you’re drawn toward is not always what you actually need, because certain things can override the subtler signals of your body by hijacking your brain chemistry.

    In the modern world, this discrepancy is especially obvious because companies know that if they can manipulate your brain chemicals, they can convince you to buy things or engage in behaviours that maybe aren’t good for you, but make them a lot of money. We’ve reached a stage of history where an enormous amount of research has been done, information is widely available, and much of this practice has been refined into a pure science. This is definitely not great for the wellbeing of the average person. Daily life starts to feel suffocating because we’re constantly battling junk that’s competing for our attention: advertisements, social media notifications, ultra-processed food wrapped in bright colours and tempting commercials, clickbait headlines, endless feeds. At a certain point, it’s all just plainly exhausting.  

    Whenever I feel lost, I like to look back at the way humans evolved. People often talk about how evolution moves extremely slowly, while culture and society, especially in the digital age, evolve absurdly quickly. One example I hear people talk about is our relationship with sugar. Early humans almost never encountered anything close to pure sugar; maybe fruit, maybe some honey if they were willing to fight a beehive for it. But now, sugary foods are everywhere, often cheaper than healthier alternatives, and engineered to taste incredible. What exactly are we supposed to do with that?

    Another example people bring up a lot is anxiety. Our brains evolved to experience some baseline level of anxiety because, historically, there really was bananas stuff happening all the time. But now, when most people are most often relatively physically safe, the brain still insists on manufacturing threats and stress responses for situations where constant cortisol is mostly useless.

    I was watching a YouTube video by a doctor talking about learning how to rest and recover properly. You can watch it here – it’s reasonably short and sweet and contains a lot more interesting stuff than what I talk about here. He mentioned something that really caught my attention: when the brain becomes tired, you start experiencing decision fatigue. That’s apparently one of the clearest indicators of mental exhaustion: just look at how difficult it suddenly becomes to make simple choices.

    When the brain is low on energy, its instinct is to choose whatever requires the least effort, because from an evolutionary perspective, low effort meant conserving resources. Back then, though, low effort also usually meant low stimulation: in other words, rest. In our modern world, that’s not really the way it works anymore.

    Because of the immediate micro-rewards we get from scrolling and, let’s say, other “chemically juicy” activities, it’s often easier to reach for internet-based stimulation than to sit quietly or do something slower and less rewarding. I’m pretty sure the brain runs some kind of short-term cost-benefit analysis, and the short-term dopamine hit wins almost every time. The problem is that when your brain is already low-energy, it’s also decision-fatigued, meaning you’re even more likely to choose the easiest option available. Modern life has created a horrible feedback loop where the “easiest” option, the choice you’re most likely to make, also further exhausts your brain by bombarding it with lights, colours, novelty, emotional prompts, and constant stimulation. So your brain gets more tired, which pushes you further toward the short-term dopamine rewards, which tires your brain even more.

    The doc in the video also said that physical exhaustion clears noticeably with sleep, but sleep doesn’t do a number on mental exhaustion in the same way. Scary stuff.

    He offered a few practical bandaids for dealing with this. One is to make the “hard” option require as little decision-making as possible. Remove planning and coordination wherever you can. For example, schedule fixed gym times every week so you don’t have to negotiate with yourself about whether or not to go. The habit itself also creates momentum, which helps reduce friction. Another suggestion was to avoid overcomplicating the planning of difficult tasks. Don’t spend thirty minutes engineering the perfect workout. Just get yourself to the gym and figure the rest out once you’re there. The third was reframing effortful activities as active choices rather than obligations. You’re choosing to go to the gym because you care about your health and want to be responsible for yourself, not because some external force is punishing you into doing it. “Shoulds” and “oughts” can take a lot of the joy out of life.

    All of these things help you choose the harder, less immediately satisfying option. But they aren’t cure-alls, and they’re not automatically spiritually nourishing either. Honestly, the only thing that has consistently helped me make structural changes around addictive behaviours is understanding what’s actually happening in the brain when I’m already overstimulated (or otherwise feeling yucky) and still choose to further overstimulate myself (or do something that’s going to feel good temporarily but make me feel more yucky in the long term). Understanding the loop itself matters. The dependency. The way the brain twists into patterns that reinforce their own continuation.

    It’s not perfect. I scrolled Facebook Marketplace way too many times today and fried my prefrontal cortex. None of the YouTube videos I tried to watch during dinner were even remotely satisfying, despite my many attempts to stick with one. But somehow, here I am, writing this instead. Thankfully, I had enough wherewithal today to remember that video, and realize that maybe my brain wasn’t actually incapable of doing the harder thing. Maybe starting just felt monumental because I was already scattered from all my phone gooning, and what I really needed was a single activity to affix my attention to.

    So I guess surviving modern life has a lot to do with understanding the loops in the brain that fold in on themselves and quietly push you toward behaviours that aren’t actually good for you. This is a responsibility that has been thrust on us, I would say unfairly, and if you’re suffering, just know that it’s because none of us were built for this shit. 

  • On (and Under) One’s Boulder

    On (and Under) One’s Boulder

    I used to have this grand idea that the reason for experiencing life was so that the cosmos (harbouring some kind of “universal consciousness”) could come to learn about itself. I think that belief came from the idea that we’re all fundamentally connected to some “source,” and that we’re really just observers witnessing our lives unfold; our observer-self doesn’t even have any meaningful tie to the life it’s watching, aside from the cosmic pairing that somehow connected it to a body. The thought was that maybe the universe developed consciousness across different beings and forms as a strange mechanism for understanding itself, in the same way that we developed consciousness, and, as a consequence, became capable of understanding ourselves in ways unconscious creatures cannot.

    Because of this, I thought it deeply important that people increase their awareness and self-awareness, because consciousness, specifically this interconnected, metaphysical kind, was the highest purpose one could serve. You were doing your part by allowing the universe to unfold and understand itself, and all that was ever expected of you was to fill out your particular corner of the universal map of all possible things, which would then fold back into the collective pool of conscious experience. That underlying belief played a nice role in my life for a good long time.

    Lately, though, maybe because of the hedonic treadmill and the brain’s inability to ever be satisfied, I don’t find this reason to push forward into the world nearly as convincing anymore. For one, in this worldview, you must entertain the idea of the universe as a kind of deity. This is fun, but has its limits. And two, being human, I had created my god in my own image: something that places self-understanding above all else.

    How exactly did I convince myself I knew what the universal consciousness wanted? Probably youthful audacity mixed with the need to funnel my religious inclinations into something other than science for a change. And honestly, I still respect my younger self for that, because I firmly believe you have to create whatever reality stirs your coffee every morning. But somewhere along the line, to my own disappointment, I think I stopped caring what the universe “wanted” from me. Or maybe I stopped believing that just because I personally value self-knowledge above most else, I can safely project that value onto reality itself. As below, so above.

    Inside myself, I feel a belief forming that a good life requires both the pursuit and achievement of forward progress (or at least the illusion and hope that you are moving toward some better future, however nebulous) balanced with enough presence and mindfulness to appreciate how far you’ve already come and the many marvels of the world around you. My brain doesn’t seem capable of being happy with only one or the other. I need progress. I need hope. I need narrative. But I also can’t appreciate anything I’ve done, all the skills I’ve developed, or the extent of the person I’ve become unless I deliberately slow down and contemplate enough to really feel it. Without this, you become an endless climber who never even stops to appreciate the view.

    At least with the brain I was gifted, if I’m not moving forward, upward, onward, it becomes difficult to even grasp the wonderful things happening around me that have nothing to do with achievement at all. When I’m delighted by momentum and confident in myself, it becomes much easier to appreciate the beauty of a rose, which, in turn, deepens my conviction that the universe is fundamentally a kind and beautiful place. But apparently, I have not gone through enough therapy to just smell the roses before my positive self-image is “justified”—or, perhaps, without fundamentally believing the future is going to have even prettier and smellier roses. Without “forward”, it’s easy to slide into what the young people might call a “depressive episode”.

    I suppose that’s a pretty good sign that my confidence, even after all this time, still depends at least somewhat on the world around me. But I think I’m banking on this idea that if I balance forward movement and quiet contemplation for long enough, I can create a kind of self-sustaining joy and belief in my own worth, even during periods when I’m not making meaningful progress in the areas of life I care about most. Even though I’m not holding on as tightly as I used to, and even though I now carry a certain je ne sais quoi because of everything I’ve stomached, metabolized, and grown from, maintaining forward momentum in my life is still one of the best ways I know to ensure I’m continually capable of appreciating the elegance of existence all around me.

    So, in the meantime, before I either achieve ultimate enlightenment and detachment or fall victim to my own fallacy, I have a survival strategy. I took inspiration for this from aging and/or deceased relatives on the Ukrainian side of my family. Many, if not all of them, developed a kind of dour intensity in old age. I once asked my father why all his relatives seemed so grumpy, and he said, “It’s a life force. It sustains them.” And… yeah. I think there’s something to that.

    We are born into this universe already engaged in a fight against entropy. Some people are lucky enough to inherit lives with structure and order built in from the beginning. They learn early how to create and maintain systems that keep them suspended above the roughness of the road beneath them. For others, the baseline is much more chaotic and far less stable. But wherever you land on that spectrum, one thing remains true: you must work every single day to maintain yourself and your life. Eat, clean, exercise, plan, exert, manage, converse, haggle, spend, save, play. You cannot really take your foot off the gas, because the moment you neglect something, it has a nasty habit of dragging you further into whatever black holes the universe is already trying to slide you toward.

    So what can actually, reliably keep Sisyphus from getting flattened by the boulder?

    Spite, maybe. The sheer refusal to accept that the universe placed you on this path with your boulder, and that the unfair punishment for stopping is suffering by crippling stagnation: the slow erosion of your strength, your momentum, your capacity, and your ability to smell the roses. Since losing the belief that I’m somehow meant to be gathering experiential data for the universe, I can at least grit my teeth and draw strength from the knowledge that, yes, I was designed as an organism destined to eventually succumb to the entropy surrounding me, but fuck you if you think I’m going to let everything collapse without a fight.

    If I can’t find permanent peace in the act of pushing the boulder uphill, then I will at least become exceptionally good at pushing it. I’m going to get stronger, and eventually the push itself is going to look effortless. I think this is the closest I’ve ever felt to touching lasting satisfaction with the human condition.

  • Liturgy of the Sink Demon

    Liturgy of the Sink Demon

    My childhood home has been haunted since before I can remember. Not the kind of haunted that causes strange noises in the attic, and only sometimes the kind of haunted where the lights flicker conspicuously during arguments. 

    No, the entities that live here are agents of imbalance, self-sustaining in their madness; like a pot you can’t take off the stove that’s always threatening to boil over. An imp that has grabbed hold of something precious and has taken off running in a direction you didn’t quite catch. Seeds of chaos in the pipes entombed by a family’s survival through nearly three decades of both miracles and miasma. Clinging disorder that shrouds itself in layers of psychic fog, an embodied torpor that uses the brain’s natural circuitry against itself. 

    The very best example of this is the demon that lives in the kitchen sink. 

    From my childhood and adolescence, I recall memories of dishes piled high, sometimes days-old, threatening to collapse under the weight of white ceramic bowls, peanut butter knives, and lids that don’t quite fit anything. Bloated grains of rice and remnants of salsa jars and paper labels from cans would combine into a heterogenous slime near the drain, threatening psychic damage to anybody who dared disturb it. Newly washed dishes often mingled with dry ones on the rack. Chaos would grow from that plumbing, again and again, no matter how many times my mother fought it back down to the shiny stainless steel surface. 

    The demon did a great job sustaining itself on a household already destined to suffer from chronic stress—stress made extra spicy with a good helping of neurodivergence and disability. It fed off of the shame and indignance felt by the kids after continual naggings from Mama Bear, and the frustration of Mama Bear that her cubs only ever seemed to nurse more chaos than they could dispel, not yet mature enough to recognize her efforts. I know all too well as an adult that helpless situations beget depression, and depression saps energy; energy that could be put towards real, sustainable progress against the forces of evil.

    When we did buy a dishwasher, the demon made sure it was one that siphoned water from the sink’s faucet for the entire three hour cycle, leaving no room for washing or rinsing in the meantime. Attempts to help always somehow further entrenched the problem. What are you supposed to do with horrors that feed in the space between your physical surroundings and your subconscious?

    I’m grown now. Fledged. I left the nest no less than five years ago; I’ve made multiple households and communed (consciously and unconsciously) with many demons of my own in the meantime. I’m housesitting for my parents right now, and while the sink is quieter than it used to be, and many stresses have been lifted from this dysfunctionally functional family, I can tell this spirit is still working on me and my loved ones. What is it, truly, that the dregs of this sink demon wants from us, even after all these years? 

    As already wisely noted by the outstanding poltergeist whisperers of our time, the answer to any demon problem is acknowledgement; simple acknowledgement. Yes, there is a demon in my sink. Yes, it is doing everything in its power to keep us all merely surviving under a mountain of undone-ness. Yes, it demands tribute, daily, in the form of small tokens of recognition. To manage, I’ll honour it every so often with a simple verbal nod, paired with a small but meaningful decision, such as putting my plate in the dishwasher rather than the sink’s basin, or emptying the drain catch when I don’t have to. Yes, if I ignore the demon’s creeping tendrils, it will become irate, offended that I have no respect for its wretched potential. 

    No, I cannot destroy the demon; yes, I know it will always be there. This being said, yes, a moment of true, conscious recognition of its demon nature—the bravery to look a real evil in the eye, followed by consistent (even if imperfect) observation and reverence—can soften the miry grip of any malignant spirit.

  • On the Impossible Task of Completion

    On the Impossible Task of Completion

    The Puzzle

    I have a vision of myself in my mind’s eye: I’m sitting in vastness, alone. I’m neither inside nor outside—above me is a slightly off-white overcast fog, and below me is a floor made of textured grey rubber that stretches endlessly in all directions. I’m surrounded by puzzle pieces; piles and piles of them. Some of these piles are sorted. Most sit in large, chaotic mounds that seem to grow bigger every time I turn my back. Between them, stray pieces are scattered with semi-intentional fervour. And here and there, in quiet little clusters, are the patches I’ve managed to piece together.

    The work of soul-making is (1) endless, (2) full of what many would call drudgery, and (3) brutally murky. Still, all of us have been given the same strange task: to gather the scattered parts of ourselves, try to understand them, and somehow make them belong to each other.

    Now and then, as you sort, beholding edge upon edge, something clicks. A few pieces fall into place and form a shape that makes sense, if only for a moment. Those moments of grasping even a small fraction of the final image can feel like small miracles—tiny confirmations that your effort matters. And sometimes, more rarely, you glance up and realize that two distant islands of pieces you’ve been working on separately for years actually belong to the same part of the picture. Their edges align, and suddenly, you can see something broader, more coherent than you could before. A glimpse of the larger shape your life might be making.

    Puzzle pieces pile up faster than you can work through them. Beyond the sheer number, there are the small indignities of handling them—some pieces are waterlogged from the occasional storm, some are frayed at the edges from being turned over too many times. A few have gone missing entirely, carried off by the dog, misplaced in old memories, or buried under something you’re not ready to face. Sometimes, just grasping the scale of it all—how much there is to sort through, how little you actually know—feels so overwhelming you have to check out for a while. Still, the hope is that if we understand the pieces we’re working with, if we sit with them long enough, we can fit them into something whole. That each one has a rightful place in the larger picture of who we are.

    This has been the shape of most of my 26 years: patiently sorting, gently fitting, watching connections form and trusting that if I just keep going, eventually the full picture will reveal itself. That I’ll understand what I’ve been building. That I’ll finally know who and what I am, and that peace will follow.

    The Shadow and the Struggle

    Not all of us go looking for trouble, but all of us find it in one way or another. Your puzzle pieces aren’t just bits of personal insight—they’re everything you understand about the world and yourself. The way they’re laid out, the way they connect (or don’t), quietly shapes the choices you make and the paths you follow. Sometimes it’s conscious. Often it isn’t. And because of that, you can spend years living out patterns set in motion by something long forgotten. Pieces get buried even deeper. But then, something cracks. Something hurts just enough to make you pay attention. And suddenly you look down and realize you’re holding a piece you’ve never quite seen before. You wonder how long it’s been there, waiting.

    Shadow work is the process of turning toward the parts of yourself that have been buried—often out of fear, pain, or shame—and gently bringing them into the light. In other words: going digging for those puzzle pieces that allow you to fully comprehend parts of your puzzle’s picture that you unconsciously fear seeing, yet feel mysteriously incomplete without. The trouble is, most of those shadow pieces (is this Yu-Gi-Oh??) are buried in the same towering mounds as everything else—habits, old defenses, stories you inherited without even realizing it. They’re often hiding in the piles that are the most daunting to sort through, and you’re largely diving into the process without even knowing what you’re looking for.

    There’s something deeply exciting about watching these little islands of understanding come together—whether the pieces are joyful or painful, euphoric or hard to hold. There is a real sense of progress, and I truly do believe that my practice has given way to real, positive change and healing that would not have otherwise been possible.

    It’s tempting, however, to draw sweeping conclusions about the whole picture based on what you’ve managed to assemble so far. Our brains are wired for narrative, and when a few pieces start to click, the mind rushes in to fill the gaps. It spins stories between and atop fragments, weaving a sense of clarity that can feel real, even when it isn’t. All narratives, no matter how grounded they seem, are always incomplete. They’re shaped by ego, for better or for worse. They can distort as easily as they clarify. And in getting caught up in the imagined whole, we often miss what’s right in front of us—or twist it into something it was never meant to be. Maybe the hardest part of all, though, is that even as these little breakthroughs come, they’re quickly absorbed into the background. Another fleeting rush of purpose, swallowed by the hedonic treadmill. The moment fades, and the search for new “insights in a haystack” begins again.

    Putting It All Together

    I sat with my pieces a few times today, legs crossed on the rubber floor, drifting hazily between the real world and my cardboard mounds. I surveyed the piles and the scattered patches. Everything felt very still. I glanced at a small story of pieces forming in front of me: this one telling of the unease I was starting to feel with my seemingly never-ending puzzle journey. I thought about all the ups and downs since I started, and the truly staggering progress I’ve made with the raw materials I have been given. All the beauty and the pain I’ve been able to touch because of this practice. Then I looked again at my unsorted piles. They were larger than ever. And I realized—even if new pieces stopped arriving tomorrow—with the time I have left on this planet, it is certain that I’ll die before I can see my puzzle to completion.

    So… what do you do when this realization knocks? Not just as an abstract idea, but as an intuitive truth? How do you live with a puzzle that must, by design, be left unfinished?

    I’ve come up with three options. One: quietly tuck it away—put the whole thought back in its box and let this particular emerging patch of puzzle pieces fall to the wayside. Keep living under the belief that you’re working toward completeness, and that if you just keep going, if you just try hard enough, you’ll get there, and you’ll find peace. Two: give up on the process entirely. Let the pieces pile up as they will. Stop sitting upstairs in your brain like a nerd, wasting your energy trying to make meaning out of chaos. And then there’s the third option: keep assembling what you can, here and there, in fragments—and try not to care too much that you’ll never get to see the finished picture.

    I think I’m aiming for that third one. Most days.

    Whatever I manage to put together in this life, I suppose that’s as complete as it gets. Maybe, if I squint, that’s not a tragedy. We’re here not to finish our puzzles, but to piece together what we can of them. To leave behind small pockets of clarity; pretty little constellations of meaning. If I go out surrounded by unfinished edges, I hope at least some of it feels beautiful. Not complete, never meant to be, but real. Touched, and known. Maybe that’s all any of us can hope for in the end. Not a finished picture, but a life spent slowly learning how to sit with the pieces—and, ideally, an unshakable understanding that the work you have done is nothing more (and nothing less) than simply, enough.

  • The TV Show I Can’t Turn Off

    The TV Show I Can’t Turn Off

    Today has been a ride. A lurching, inconsistent, weirdly-edited ride. Many days over the past few months have been like this. Certainly more than average from my recent memory. I keep returning to the thought:

    “Sometimes, the TV show just sucks.” 

    There were years where I’d just zone out during the bad episodes—when the writing felt phoned in, when I didn’t care about the characters, when the pacing was off or the whole thing veered into absurd prisonous melodrama. I’d mentally leave the room, distract myself with psychic busywork, and concern myself (sometimes pathologically) with story beats that were more compelling than what was happening in front of me. Slowly though, I realized: tuning out the dreadful parts doesn’t actually make the show better. It just flattens everything. Even the good scenes lose their meaning when you’ve been numbing yourself.

    Mindfulness teaches us to be present; to feel the emotions your TV show, your life, evokes in you without judgement or pretense. This idea has changed my life, but what an immense burden it can feel like; a spiritual contractual obligation to sit through every single episode, knowing that no matter how horrible it feels, the alternative is worse. You have no remote. No skip button or fast-forward. The best you can do is sit there with your eyes propped open, clockwork orange-style, watching your life unfold. 

    Because, ultimately, this is the only show you get. There is no second channel. No spinoffs. You can choose this, or you can choose nothingness.

    We have understandably evolved to believe that we are controlling the plot of our TV show. Some people who prefer a bit of abstraction have touted the “life is just a video game” mantra – which allows for a certain level of emotional detachment from the destabilizing forces around you. But sometimes, in moments of stillness, you look around and realize that not only are you not this main character you so identify with—there is no controller in your hands. There never was. You’re not in charge. The real essence of “you”, what feels conscious, is just a watcher; akin to someone at the cinema getting so lost in a movie that the boundaries between them and the film’s universe dissolve. Or, maybe, you’re spacing out, not paying attention, living in your own thoughts. Or, perhaps, you’re sitting there, wishing things were different.

    If I have one thing for the complaints department, I wish that realizing you’re not steering makes the stakes feel lower. If anything, it just makes them weirder. “Oh great, I still have to feel everything, even if I can’t do anything about it?”

    And yet, even if you’re not the one making decisions for your main character—it’s not like nothing changes in life, or that things don’t get better. I don’t feel stuck in some cosmic rerun, doomed to repeat the same storylines. In fact, the main character of my show is really quite good at growing. She’s getting good at learning how to work with herself, reshape her environment, and sit quietly and peacefully. She spends an enormous amount of energy peeling layers back, tending to old wounds, tracing patterns back to their origins, learning sophistication in her feelings and practicing (and simply being) whole. That process makes for pretty compelling television, in its own funny way. The me watching all this unfold in a Google Doc is at least somewhat bemused by this fourth-wall-breaking emotional arc in particular.

    I’ve changed more in the past few years than I thought possible. I know myself now in ways I hadn’t since I was a kid. There is momentum, evolution, movement.

    But still—here I am. Sitting at my desk. Irritated with my texting apps. Raw from the fact that being emotionally open with the world has made me vulnerable to all sorts of bizarre new pain I didn’t want. Stuck on the treadmill, grateful to be moving, but also, sometimes, tired of running.