Notes from San Diego

I saw the lights from the city creating a constellation of urban universe beneath me. Fifteen minutes later I saw the stars light up the sky when the lights beneath me stopped shining. The ones made by humans shine brighter. They are denser. I have not let myself get excited about this trip. Worried about this or that. For a second I thought my flight would get cancelled. Houston was hit hard by Harvey. There are two more hurricanes to follow. If I was in high school, I would compare this to the John Green quote about my thoughts being stars I am  unable to fathom. I am not. I have stopped thinking as much, writing as much. I feel more. I do more. I am capable of more. A part of me is nostalgic for what I could have seen and done in high school and college. Another part of me is okay with being where I am doing what I am. A third part of me is in a state of yearning. This is what it's like being twenty-three. There's a twenty year old girl sitting next to me on the flight. She's studying abroad next year in England. She tells me she studies Musical Theatre. A small part of me envies her. Carefree, willing to experience so much, talk to anyone. She tells me her baggage got lost between connecting flights. "You know talking this through with you, I'm going to call my mom." I have maybe gotten two words in. She calls her mom. Her mom comforts her. "Thank God for moms, am I right?" Thank God for moms indeed. Also thank God for being twenty-three and having a job and further job opportunities and coworkers who are family and friends who are more than family and family who is everything. I feel uncertain about everything in life right now. What grad school will I go to? What will I study? What kind of job do I want? Do I like my job or the people I work with? Do I like it because it's comfortable or because it challenges me? Should I pursue other opportunities? What kind of a car do I want? And when do I move out? My mind is a mess. I want to sort it out. But maybe I will end up left more confused after this trip. Who knows?

-- 09/06 10:26 PM

I thought I would write everyday but I wanted to live in the moment so here I am. I am on a train from Vista to Anaheim. I woke up at 8:30 this morning by a call from my mom. I got dressed, got to the train station ahead of time, went to get coffee and rushed back to the station. I dropped coffee on myself in the meanwhile only to find out the train was delayed by an hour. We walked to the beach nearby and I spoke to an old man selling souvenirs on the pier who lived in Texas for a bit. We talked about Whataburger and the flooding in Houston. 'Heard it's terrible down there, huh?' It is terrible. People with homes destroyed and water everywhere. A city at a stand still that is always filled with life. I see the contrast with the city I am in. Two different worlds. I begin to see the strength of water. An ocean that you can learn to fight, rain that invades your home. I am a mountain girl to the core. That is where I find peace. But there is something to be said about knowing the ocean. About the waves that come and go. That determine how your day will be. If the sea is angry, you cannot console it. If the sea is gentle, it is there to play. You cannot win against nature. You can only learn to live with it.

-- 09/10, 12:02 PM

I am on a train back from downtown San Diego to Vista. I spoke to a lady at a bookstore for 30 mins. She tells me her dentist is in Mexico. She tells me about the price she pays to live in this beautiful city. She says, 'but you know what? I wouldn't trade it for anything.' I have never seen people be proud of Houston like that. Maybe I need to be by myself more in that city. It's my last day here. I want to explore more but my feet have blisters. I haven't had proper sleep in days. My hair is a disaster. I have ocean sand in my laundry and I am running out of my deodorant. A part of me is itching to be home in my bed. Another part of me wants to stay here forever. I have a few answers now. I made a few decisions that require a lot of courage. I hope they are the right ones. They feel right.

-- 09/11, 4:34 PM

I am home now. I took a shower in my shower and I am in my bed. My brother told me I deserved this vacation. I agree. I needed a change of scenery. It was beautiful but home is much sweeter.

-- 09/12, 11:05 PM

There, where one burns books… one, in the end, burns men.

A few thoughts from the Holocaust Museum Houston -

Here all things scream silently.

There was a bowl and two spoons at the museum, remnants of what was used for meals at Auschwitz. The spoon had splatters of blood on it, still. A lady told a story of her best friend at the camp. The friend died of sickness in the camp. The friend hadn't been eating for days and kept her rarioned bread on her in a sack, carrying to and from the labor camp. When the friend finally succumbed to her demise, the lady said "please forgive me, you do not need the bread anymore but I do. I must survive so one day I can tell your story."

There's a carriage of a train used in Germany to carry Jews to camps. You can walk inside that carriage. It's barely big enough to fit 15-20 people. Four vents on top corners for air, and two doors on both sides of the cabin. Sometimes up to 100 people were stuffed in these and sent off to their fates. You step in there and even with open doors, you feel suffocated.

I saw a picture of a few kids aged 6-9, looking at a camera with fear. Their bodies were blackened. They were burnt in Mengeles lab for scientific experimentation purposes.

Elie Wiesal described it all as, around me everything was dancing a dance of death.

There weren't many worse crimes a woman could commit than being pregnant in the camp. If a woman was pregnant when she got to the camp, she faced two choices - abortion or losing her child after birth. No choice at all.

There's a tree in an exhibit celebrating survival there. On that tree, you can write something in remembrance and honor of the victims and hang it. It's called the tree of life. I read many comments saying 'never again.' My first question was, how soon does the never end?

Heartbreaking, to sum it up.

Always do a little more than what's expected of you.

I was watching an interview of Sam Elliott where he was describing how he got started in the industry. He states that he would go to the legal department at Fox Studios and read the scripts lying around and then go to the casting department and say, there's a script coming your way, number so and so, and I'd like to read for it. It wasn't in his job description to do that, he didn't get paid to do that, and yet he made that extra effort.

I have been working a 9-5 job in IT for a little over a year now. The pay is an entry level salary. The job can be tedious and boring at times. A lot of times, you have to give in to the demands of a management that can be a bit removed from reality. You want to tell them, listen you're building a tower with a foundation of glass. If you do not solidify the foundation, it will come crumbling down. You cannot ignore the human spirit in order to be more profitable. It's an intricate balance - between keeping good resources and growing as a company. You have to dance on that line and ensure you don't sway too much in either direction. It's hard, but who said work isn't supposed to be hard?

You see the hierarchy in effect. There are things you don't like, and yet you see the need for them. There are things you like, and yet you see the lack of business need for them. You want to do things you like, but you spend time doing things you don't like for two words: business need. It's a funny phrase. You can justify a lot with business need. We need to hire more inexperienced people because business need. We need you to do XYZ type of work, for business need. We can't implement this yet because business need demands your attention elsewhere. And yet, you see where the thought process is coming from. It's capitalism in its pure raw form. So you bite your tongue, redirect your attention, and do the work that needs to be done. Now, the management is happy. You're doing what needs to be done, you're fulfilling the business need. But what's next? What about the little project you started that you know can change the way you do things? Make your job more efficient and faster and less of a liability. It isn't a business need yet, and yet if it is implemented, you see it can be.

You have two options now. Do what you're being told, collect your paycheck, and be done with it. Your management is happy. It won't reflect poorly on your yearly reviews. What's the harm? And then you have another option. An option that makes no monetary sense. It's an investment of your time and effort and intellect beyond what you are asked for and beyond what you are paid for. It's doing a little more than what's expect of you. No one will blame you for not making that choice. No one will look down on you for not making that choice. You will still get your paycheck, you will still be reviewed fairly, if you don't make this choice. And yet, some part of you understands the need for this choice. The need to go a little beyond what is expected of you. To understand your job a little better, to try one more trick to try and resolve an issue, to do a little more that what is needed.

I have struggled with this choice for a few months now. Everyone around me keeps telling me, people will take advantage of you. They will start expecting that little more from you if you start doing it. That you have to be capitalistic to survive in a capitalistic environment like this. It only makes sense - do what is needed to get paid. Why bother with the extra step?

At first I wondered if these people were right. If I was letting people take advantage of me. I'm not getting paid to be there for an hour longer, so why am I sitting here until 6 trying to grasp a concept when I could have left at 5 with no questions asked? But then I took some time off and tried to remind myself of a few things. As a twenty-three year old, I do not have a clear picture of the life I want to live. I do not know what field I want to be in, what career I want, what kind of work I like doing, etc. But what I do know is that I want to work on myself. Be a better person than yesterday, be a more knowledgeable person than before, be a little more hardworking than my previous self. I want to be better at being me. It sounds so cliched, believe me I know. But I want to invest in myself. So, when I am there an hour longer than I need to be, am I making that investment in my own growth or am I being taken advantage of? Could it be the latter? Of course. That's the nature of capitalism. But is the former more important than the latter? Absolutely, to me. This could be a convoluted explanation of me justifying my workaholic ways. I don't know. But I wonder if this work ethic that I have learned, that I enjoy, and that I crave will hurt me in the future. I do not know.

But when I hear successful people talk about doing a little extra, working a little harder than necessary, going that little extra step, it makes me feel not so crazy. Like maybe there will come a time when it will all be worth it. I keep thinking, I am young. I am just starting my career. If I switch fields, most people won't bat an eye. I have time to build my resume. Right now, experience is the one thing I don't have. If I work towards that, the rest of the pieces will fall in place, right? I don't know, I hope so. If nothing else, I am learning how hard I can work.

Success is counted sweetest By those who ne'er succeed.

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the Purple Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of Victory

As he defeated - dying -
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!

This is an Emily Dickinson poem that uses the imagery of a victorious army and a dying soldier from the opposition to suggest that perhaps only those who have suffered defeat can understand success.

Although my life is no where near glorious, or morbid depending on your perspective, enough to make such grand exclamations about life, I have been thinking about this poem recently.

Today is February 25th, 2017. It has been exactly 285 days since I started working, 287 days since I graduated college, and 289 days since I took my last exam of undergrad. There are moments when I feel like college was just yesterday. When I hear my coworkers talk about their kids, I feel like I've been thrown into some Twilight Zone. In my head I scream, 'but I am a kid!.' But then when I hang out with my friends who are still in college, I realize how much of a difference a year makes. I hear their concerns and they feel so foreign and reminiscent to me. I think back to days when I would be worrying about exams and homework and making it to class on time. Now I worry about project deadlines and client satisfaction and making it to meetings on time.

How crazy this all is. Your body gets used to a 9 to 5 schedule. You find happiness in a life where you go to bed at 10 and wake up at 6:30. Your conversations turn into filing for taxes and dentist appointments and how your coworker's family is doing. You form new rituals. Listen to silence on the morning commute, music while working, and podcasts on your drive home. You create a mental list of ten things you want to do at work today, in your morning commute. You get to work, check your email, and realize there are two client escalations and three things that are broken and need to be fixed by the end of business day. You edit your mental list to prioritize these five things. You take a deep breath, get some coffee, joke around with your coworkers sitting next to you, and turn your focus to your day. Before you know it, it's noon. You decide to go out for lunch with your coworkers. You talk about your day, your projects, how ridiculous some client demands are and how silly some participants are. You have created a niche of your own. It's stressful at times, it's pleasant at other times. You always have help, you always have company. It is the antidote to your introversion. You blink and you realize nine months have gone by. How crazy this all is.

Your brain screams time out, and you agree. So here I am sitting on a couch in my living room. There's three huge windows open and sunlight is lighting up the whole room. I am sipping on coffee and I am thinking about these past nine months on my first real time off from work. It seems like I am finally getting a chance to take a deep breath.

It's both beautiful and absurd how much you are capable of learning in a span of nine months. You start from not knowing what a concept is to being so good at it that you can break the logic in that concept to solve a problem. For some, this might sound like the most boring thing in the world. To me, it's fun. I have always liked puzzles. I like breaking things to solve a bigger problem. I like taking a teaspoon of knowledge and using it to dictate how the waves of an ocean form. There's an intellectual high in that for me. My favorite part of my job is taking something someone has programmed, and finding ways to break it to build something more logically sound. This is not to romanticize this job I am working - it is a corporate job at the end of the day. It has its ups and downs. But this is a reminder to myself of why I do not hate what I do.

You have to have some motivation that makes you sacrifice a third of your day, five times a week to a place. For some, it's putting food on the table for their families and paying bills. For others, it's a combination of that and intellectual curiosity. And for the rest of us, who are lucky enough to not have to deal with bills yet, it's simply the will to learn and solve problems. You cannot sacrifice so much of your life to something you don't believe in.

I am a very emotional person when it comes to what I believe in. I feel too much when I read something well written. I get floored by small gestures of kindness and empathy. If I see a great piece of art, it brings a sense of stillness and wonder in me. It's hard for me to not be affected by things, people, ideas, situations. What I feel is on my face. I am stressed, people around me see it on my face. I am happy, people around me see it on my face. I wear my heart on my sleeve. Not because I am weak but because I have the emotional support around me to be okay when it does get broken. So it's nice for a person so emotional to have a place where they can be so logical and rational. To some extent, that is why I chose Math as a major, and why I decided to go into IT. Because it's a safe space for those emotional wrecks among us to go and be driven purely by logic. It prevents one from getting stuck in a rabbit hole. It reminds you that you can not know anything about a system and a programming language, and give it nine months and a whole lot of patience, and be able to master it enough that people come to you for guidance. It is nice to know that you can create something that helps someone somewhere out there, even if it is simply for them to have a way to get a prescription filled at a pharmacy.

So I guess for a while this is a nice place to be in. I am 23. I have a bachelor's degree and a job. My body has the strength to work 60-70 hour weeks on average. I have the drive to be good at what I do. I don't have any responsibilities. I have a lifetime ahead of me. And most importantly, I have a curious mind constantly wondering how things work. For now, I am content.

We read James Joyce together and wrote comedy sketches together.

John Green in a Vlogbrothers video says that about his friendship with Ransom Riggs. It's so peculiar having to live with this personhood that you have. It's a very basic question and yet there is an interesting sense of calmness to it.

My writing is very reminiscent these past few instances. As if I'm living life in rewind and fast-forward mode and there is very little time of stillness. Calm, ripple-less water. Birds chirping at a sunrise on a mountain top. Foreign, foreign feelings. And yet, I will allow it.

Do not be a coward. This craft is old. This struggle is ancient. This hesitance is normal. There is failure, and there is success. Start with simple words. The beginning is that first sincere emotion. That feeling in your gut, in your throat, of there being something that needs to get out. You have tried to contain it, you have tried to ignore it, and yet it beats its chest until you acknowledge it. Bleary-eyed, one foot asleep, fingers hurting. Thoughts jumbled, running, doing cartwheels. Like little kids at trampoline parks and daredevils at NASCAR tracks. Everything is happening at once, and everything demands your attention. How do you sift through? An image of your mother sifting through the flour to take out impurities pops up in your mind. What a mundane task. What a mundane life.

How do people live like this, you ask. It is curious, how we prioritize moments. Choppy, abrupt flow of this writing. Choppy, abrupt flow of ideas. Choppy, abrupt flow of life.

Either you process it or you experience it. There is more to come. There always seems to be. But you are not learned enough. You do not yet have the right to walk on this path. You do not have the right equipment for it yet. You will starve. Blisters will form on your feet and you do not have a change of shoes. Give it time. Build up your strength. Slowly. You will get there.

A Few Thoughts on Grief

Being born and raised a Pakistani woman, I know a bit about grief. I hail from a country that faces terrorism everyday. I have personally known people who have been victims of terrorism. In eighth grade, there was a bomb blast five minutes from my school. I was in class. My classmates and I heard it. We went into denial mode and hoped it was a transformer. The mosque my family attended was attacked in 2009, a year after we had moved out of that place. It was pure luck. This is not to say I know what it feels like to lose a family member or a close friend to terrorism, just that it is impossible to be Pakistani and not be touched by grief.

It's surreal. Life goes on smoothly when you're across the world. You're expected to smile and make a joke, be patient in your everyday endeavors, move on as soon as possible. It's heartbreaking, this expectation. I am of the belief that there is no right way to grieve. Our grief is as personal as our beliefs. Be it through tears or whiskey, remembrance is remembrance.

So this is my way of grieving. Living a little more. Being kinder to those who don't deserve it. Making more jokes than usual. Smiling a little more brightly. Striving for justice a little more passionately. Creating art a little more profoundly. Working a little harder to live a better life. To me, this celebration of life, is the best form of remembrance. Live for yourself and for them. Create for yourself and for them. Learn for yourself and for them. Spread kindness and love, for yourself and for them.

Thoughts with Orlando today. Peace, love, kindness.

Undergrad in Restrospect

Today, I took my last final exam of my undergraduate career. I have officially finished the coursework for a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics. All that is left is my graduation on Saturday.
When I tell people I studied Mathematics by choice, people give me this funny look as if to say hello, junkie! share the coke. Yes, it is true I decided to pick the tougher major. It is also true that I have hated my life more often than not since then. And there are days still that I wonder if I made the right decision. Frankly, I don't know. All I do know is what I have learned as a student in this field for the past four years which is as follows:

1. If you give me a problem, I can probably figure out a way to solve it. It may take some time, it may take some learning of new ideas, and it most certainly will require trial and error but I can figure it out.
2. I know how to reason through tough situations. When you have enough professors riding your ass for not providing sound logic, you learn to think ten times before making an argument/approaching a situation. More than Literature, Math has taught me the weight of each word. One small difference between 'and' and 'or' can change your entire argument/disprove what you're trying to prove. So what you say matters. What you do matters. And how you think matters. 
3. A good 90% of what I learned has no real life application (until you master it, of course) and still I know how to appreciate a good argument.
4. To be wrong and to fail is both heartbreaking and exciting. Heartbreaking because it's fun to be right. Exciting because you get to reroute your brain and think from a different perspective trying new variables and different dimensions.
5. You can give me a sample of something as boring as owners of lawnmowers and I can get excited about it. You can also give me the most interesting topic to think about and it can bore me to tears. It all depends on how authentic your resources are. 
6. The most fun classes for me have been the ones where the class averages were consistently in the 30's/40's and everyone failed together. Simply because it's comforting to know that no one knows anything and once that formality of preconceived knowledge is out of the way, you can sit down and come up with creative ways to solve a problem. 

As I think back to my time at my university, I know it's important to be thankful for what was given to you in however small form it was but I also think it's important to not paint it with a whimsical brush that takes away from its flaws. It's equally important to think critically about what went wrong and figure out what can be done to fix it. So this is my hope: those of us who did well in university-may we keep doing well, those of us who did poorly-may we find a way to turn things around, and those of us who couldn't quite get there-may we find the courage to begin again.

Congratulations and much love to all the graduates!

2015 in Restrospect

This year has been about distancing self from things I have always known to be true. I'm sure there is a correlation between being at a place for the last time and feeling detachment from that place, from self in that time. There is probably a need to break enough ties so leaving the place hurts a little less-be it a mental place. But I have felt a very prolonged sense of detachment from things I knew to be true.
I have barely picked up a pen to write anything. I have focused more on nonfiction books. I have let myself be lead by my reasoning. I only skipped class when I was sick, unlike my first year at university where I would skip a lecture to go sit by the fountains and read. If I were to put the eighteen years old Mina and the twenty-two years old Mina side by side, I'd see a transformation from an idealist to a realist. Not sure if that's a good thing.
I have learned to trust my body. If it says it needs sleep, I acquiesce. Some part of me wants to do this as a favor to the eighty years old me. I have started working out somewhat regularly-not as much as I would like to but definitely more than before. I am patient with myself. I give myself the time I need-be it intellectual, emotional, or taking ten minutes to do an exercise an average person can do in five minutes. And it is fucking hard as hell. These things are supposed to make you happy, or happier, or at least content. I'm sure that phase will come but right now I'm miserable. But I have the strength to acknowledge that. I am no longer shy to admit that something is intellectually difficult or emotionally difficult or physically difficult. I admit I have a long way to go. My only stubbornness is in getting there. I am learning what it means to disagree with someone on major things-sexuality, human rights, economy, morals, etc.- and be civil in a conversation. I am learning what it means to love someone and still disagree with them. I am learning what it means to question things, ideas, thoughts but never an emotion if it is sincere. I avoid confrontations. I loathe them. Specially when they put me in a position to teach. I am not a teacher at heart. My soul is of a student. I can learn. I can't teach. Perhaps I will learn to do the latter.
I have become everything I hated when I started university. My degree serves the purpose more of being a segue from education to employment than to lead me on an intellectual road of curiosity. I despise the night, I have become a creature of the daylight. Sun soothes my soul, however scorching it may be. I let myself feel anger and then I give it to the wind. I do hard things now so I don't have to do the impossible later. I treat myself as a person rather than a machine.

I am terrified of what the year will bring. I am not ready. But I have no choice. So I shall march on. 

Being Twenty-One and Other Concerns

For the past few months, I have begun to really feel the burden of being twenty-one. This is not in the typical Pakistani girl sense where I woe about not getting rishtay. I am thankful everyday that I was raised in a family that taught me to be independent. I am weighed down by the burden of being a person.

It is difficult to think of myself as anything other than twenty-one for instance but it is equally difficult to imagine myself as twenty-one. Legally, I can vote in an election, buy my own alcohol, buy cigarettes, enlist in the army, make my own decisions without a guardian signing off on them but I can not rent a car. Emotionally, I cant fathom how some of my friends are grown-ups enough to get married while others are too drunk or high to remember their last names. Physically, I feel as if I am finally being given a seat at the adults table but asked to still eat in the paper plates instead of the expensive china.

I know it's a weird time for everyone. You want to know the answers to everything and yet some part of you wants to cling to the child in you that would say screw it and stay up the whole night reading a good book before a 12-hour day. You find reasons-my body won't be able to handle this when I'm fifty, I will have other responsibilities and will regret these decisions, etc.

I keep thinking back to my freshman year self-so hopeful and filled with possibilities. I thought by the time I'd graduate I would have some sense of being. Perhaps know what I want in life or at least what to order at a bar. It's not that not knowing those things at twenty-one is particularly terrible, you can still get away with your naivete. It's just the idea of not having a time frame that bothers me. A part of me knows not to stick to convention like the Bible but another part of me balks at the idea of a journey I may not have the strength to bear. (I will always confuse bare and bear.)

Every few days I come up with a new plan for life. I have a flexible degree and there is coursera, I can learn things. I try to remind myself that I could be worse off. I could have gotten a degree in something I hated and had no career prospects. But there is this feeling of not doing enough that I can't seem to shake off. In my mind, after you hit thirty, life seems to end. Which isn't rational, I know, but it's always there. That I need to do XYZ by the time I'm thirty but I don't even know what career I want to pursue precisely. My dad, who is the most content and self-assured man I know, has changed his career at least three times in his entire life. Still he writes on the sidelines and has a few projects here and there to keep him busy.

It makes me sad that we as human beings have created so much simply to distract ourselves. This of course doesn't take away from the importance of the Art it inspires but at the bottom of it all is still a way to utilize time.

In the past few months, every time I have come across a friend of mine they have all said the same thing-that my major (Mathematics) has made me more calm and logical in the way I talk/think/react to life. It is certainly an humbling compliment but it makes me wonder how much of it is being rational and how much being passionless. I am perhaps a bit resentful towards my university for taking that passion away from me but it sounds petty, even to my ears.

I wonder, however, if I am indeed more logical and calm, then why do I constantly feel like that moment between the lightning strikes and you hear the thunder, where you're just holding your breath and waiting for the uproar of nature. Anxious, simply, because you do not know the extent of that sound. Will it be a quiet rumble, soft like being woken up from sleep by hushed voices in a distance? Or will it be loud as if your blood is responding to the storm outside and you can't tell where you stop being and the thunder starts?

naivete

There is a lot to be said about loving flaws. Poetically, ideally, it sounds beautiful. Realistically, it sounds impractical. How do you love a family member knowing their disapproval of homosexuality, for instance. How do you create a love that accepts hatred-blind hatred. Sometimes the thought that you could love someone so immensely is awkward to me. Other times, it's more natural than breathing. To be human, and to accept your own humanity is the biggest mystery to me.
It baffles me that over the span of human existence-in this state of evolution-we have created so many religions, so many philosophies, simply to begin to understand ourselves.
I want to go back to being fifteen at times. My words didn't have the barrier of age. I could ask, what does death mean, without sounding like a child. Sometimes I want simplistic questions and even more simplistic answers. What is God? What is life? What does it mean to believe? Can one person change the world? How can I change the world? The simple curiosity of a fifteen year old vs. the greedy twenty-one year old who wants all the answers right now, it's an interesting comparative.
Thoughts are overwhelming and underwhelming but never truly whelming (Clueless reference anyone?). It is always either too much or too little. As an artist, you either create or you are created. As a human, you keep trying to distance yourself from your humanity. By butchering people or by creating supernaturals, you distance yourself from the human in you. Where does this self-loathing come from? Do we inherit it from our ancestors? Do we adopt it from the worst of our kind? You keep hurting and weeping and hurting and weeping.
Telling yourself to breathe, reminding yourself to take it easy.  C'est la vie. But why is life such? Why not better? We are certainly capable of it. Why don't we expect better from ourselves? Why are we so lazy?