Observer

It seems my observer has returned.

When I finished reading Getting Along with Time, I began to understand mental models. It took me a month to finish that thin book.

As I was celebrating the improvement in my mental patterns, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment announced that the mind is a trap and that its predictive ability only focuses on the future, preventing you from knowing the power of now. These different arguments confused me at the time. As I continued reading, the concept of the observer appeared before my eyes.

I heard about the observer for the first time in college. I came across it in The Dark Forest. It fascinated me even more after I read a book about quantum mechanics.

There is also a concept of the observer in psychology. It is different from the previous idea (Observer (quantum physics)) and also from the observer pattern in design patterns. After completing Think on These Things a year later, I attempted to establish an observer of my own. Because usually, when you see someone else doing something, things become clearer. Weaknesses and blind spots become obvious, and you can find better solutions.

I was fortunate enough to achieve this goal during a break, having two versions of myself: one performing and one observing. I don’t think the observer is equivalent to the superego, but it is clearly the guardian of the self.

But when I moved to Beijing for work a year and a half ago, everything I had built was destroyed. My observer was gone. I developed some new habits, such as frequently looking at the clock, which exposed my anxiety and nervousness.

When I made mistakes, I felt exhausted. Luckily, I had a long vacation and went to my parents’ house. Although it wasn’t an external venue, it at least took me away from the mega-city. Additionally, I had deep conversations with my parents about dreams. They felt helpless because our family was poor, and hotel prices kept rising. They didn’t understand why I exhibited such strange behavior.

Ten days later, my vacation came to an end, and I felt relaxed.

Translated by gpt-3.5-turbo