The fact that life doesn’t come with a user manual has always made me feel kind of defeated. On the one hand, I’m genuinely excited by the randomness and unpredictability of everyday events. On the other hand, I often feel powerless trying to navigate in the chaotic currents. How nice it would be if my life came with a manual. It doesn’t need to be that specific, but could it at least offer some rough guidelines?

During Covid, on the day the Nintendo Switch came out, people were lining up outside Target. One to two hours of waiting—it made me give up immediately. What if I got infected? Turns out, I still haven’t had Covid. Maybe it was an asymptomatic infection, Daiga said. No way, I said. I really don’t feel like I’ve had any cold-like symptoms at any point, though I’ve had plenty of other kinds. The flu isn’t my weakness. I never catch those seasonal bugs. Psychiatry is—anything seems to hit me there, hard.

Sometimes I’m not sure if I’m mentally strong or weak. If you say I’m strong, I’m also someone who gets triggered easily. But if you say I’m weak, I’m also extremely anti-fragile. Every time I get smashed, twisted, destroyed—I can reassemble and level up fast. It’s like every time I’m about to game-over, when even I feel there’s no more hope, I somehow get an extra life, bounce back, even higher. This kind of nonlinear growth has turned pain and suffering into my fastest path to transformation. Trial and error—not the slow kind, but the dive-straight-down kind. Sinking to the ocean floor, getting lost, suffocating, until one final gasp brings me back up. Or repeatedly crashing into a wall until I know every corner of it—every texture of every brick—so well that I can finally find a way that fits this intricate, 11-dimensional wall exactly.

I like staying up late. On the one hand, I love the silence of the night, the occasional police car passing by, the weird Citizen alerts. At night the city becomes a completely different place—full of ghosts and monsters. And I happen to be curious about this hidden side of the city. It’s not some kind of kink—it’s just a natural curiosity about the unknown, a need for completeness, an interest in the full spectrum. The good and the bad, the simple and the messy—I want to know all of it. If I like a place, I want to accept and understand all of it.

On the other hand, I enjoy the feeling of being cornered by anxiety and pressure. I’m probably someone who’s too relaxed under normal conditions—if “too” even makes sense here. I don’t like feeling tense, but I do like anxiety. There’s a difference. Anxiety makes me focused, efficient, decisive. Tension makes me panicked, confused, all over the place. I like relaxed anxiety. And pressure? It brings out my best. So in those high-pressure nights, I crash into walls, dive deep—it’s like smoking, a guilty pleasure, with a pinch of pain. In those late-night hours, when no one else is awake—just me, my thoughts, and the creatures that only exist at this hour—I get this strange sense of secret ownership over the city. Like the world is mine. Just mine. Free, unforced. Full of space, full of possibility.

During Covid, when the Nintendo Switch dropped, there were long lines outside Target. One to two hours of waiting? I gave up immediately. What if I got infected? Luckily, just a few weeks later, the hype died down—everyone had already bought one. When I finally got my Switch, of course it was for Animal Crossing.

Back then, I wasn’t used to playing games. If it weren’t for being stuck at home with nothing to do during the pandemic, I wouldn’t have joined the Animal Crossing cult either. I’m not someone who chases trends, but I try to follow them just enough—to feel like I’m still connected to what’s going on around me. Just enough not to drift too far off.

I wasn’t sure how to play. The game barely gives you any instructions. Everything had to be figured out by yourself. Flowers can be crossbred. The museum is there just to look at. If you keep walking up to the same NPC, he’ll get mad. But there’s no manual. Just like life. All the details—how things work—are up to you to notice, to try, to piece together. I didn’t even know what genre of game this was. Was this normal? I thought games were supposed to have rules. But this one doesn’t tell you the rules. All the rules are hidden—or at least, when the game first came out, I had no idea what I was doing. There weren’t any guides yet. Not that I’m the kind of person who reads guides anyway.

I don’t know if Animal Crossing is a normal game. What I do know is: this POV, first-person, immersive role-playing game I’m playing right now—called life—it doesn’t come with a manual either. And not only that, everyone has a different one. Mine won’t work for you, yours won’t work for me. Each person gets a unique hidden copy. Like a car insurance policy that only covers one named driver. I’m utilitarian, I’m result-driven. Unlike games, which are for enjoying the process, I divide life into stages and tasks, and I actually care about completing them. Even though the final result of life is death, I still care about making progress.

I don’t mind the result—because I can’t. The result is always the same anyway. What I can care about is the process. But a process with no phase results, no checkpoints, is directionless. You can’t build real momentum without feedback. But what is “progress,” really? Progress is when you can feel yourself moving in the right direction. When life starts to become simpler, more stable, more subtle, more effortless—though still complex, chaotic, and intense—but full, complete, real, reliable. Real enough that you stop doubting. Reliable enough that things just feel right. Full enough that you can’t take on anything more. Complete enough that you can finally see all of yourself. I feel like I’ve said absolutely nothing. And also everything. But you get what I mean, right?

Water flows downward, but this “down” isn’t height—it’s potential. When high pressure connects with low pressure, water naturally flows toward the low. What I don’t understand is: how does the water know, in that instant of contact, that the other side is low pressure? How does it already know to flow there? Why doesn’t it flow over first, see what’s on the other side, then decide whether to stay or come back? Why, at the very moment of contact, does it already anticipate the future? Doesn’t even hesitate—just goes that way. Is that some kind of unsolved mystery? Maybe our world, too, touched the future the moment it exploded into being, and we are merely mayflies surviving on this tiny particle surface of the long unfolding. In that case, everything’s already been decided. Me, sitting here, typing this sentence—it’s already decided. Even if the superposition hasn’t collapsed, all collapses are caused by interactions. And even if they haven’t happened yet, there’s already only one possibility left. Like in Avengers: Endgame—only one way it ends. I don’t know if that’s just a Hollywood screenwriting template, or if it secretly contains some truth. But I agreed with it.

This POV, immersive, first-person roleplaying game I’m playing right now—it doesn’t come with a user manual either. And not only that, everyone’s manual is different. Mine won’t work for you. Yours won’t work for me. That makes me feel deeply frustrated. People are always so specific, so detailed, so complex. While my ability to observe systems and patterns helps me predict general trends with some accuracy, that’s systems theory—it’s not the individual. I can understand the big picture, but when it comes to the specifics, I’m not that great.

I don’t know why I’m not sharp with details. Maybe because I’m too sensitive, and details make me feel too much. So I had to numb myself. I’ve grown used to high-pressure, high-variance, high-chaos environments—finding direction inside chaos, pressure, and constant change. Seeking patterns in what stays the same. Grounding my own center. Moving forward. Maybe my personality is the result of chaotic emotional weather. Maybe it was trained. It must have formed before I turned fourteen—because that’s when I remember clearly starting to have my own direction.

So is this a personality, or just a tool? I’m not sure. What even is a personality? Do I even have one? If I do, there’s definitely more than one. The word itself—“personality”—性 and 格—both already imply multiplicity. “性” feels binary. “格” feels structural, four-sided. Using words like these to describe the internal dimensions and external expressions of a human being—who might be what, five-dimensional? eleven-dimensional?—feels crude. Reductionist. I understand human complexity. But I’m also scared of it. I’m an extrovert, but I’m scared of how complicated people are. That fear turned me into a homebody. Into retreat. Not because I wanted to. Just because, honestly, I’ve never really had good experiences interacting with crowds. I want to go with the flow, I really do. But I’m just bad at hiding. Sometimes I don’t even know what the flow is. So how am I supposed to pretend I’m going along with it?

They say the person we understand the least is ourselves. I’m not sure that’s true. After all, we spend the most time with ourselves—how could we know the least? Maybe it’s not that we don’t understand ourselves, but that we don’t know how far off we are from everyone else. Relative to others, how far is too far? Is this much too much? What’s right, what’s wrong, which direction is the right direction? But maybe—just maybe—every direction is the right direction. Just like I said earlier, you’re already flowing toward the only low-pressure zone.