Be a Well-Articulated Self

I usually have an idea of trapping the brain with its ability to express itself. My brain is highly dense and multidimensional, while language is a low-bandwidth means of communication. So my brain is in the language cage, and that feeling is frustrating.

I thought that by increasing the number of words I could choose from and increasing my vocabulary, I could free myself from that cage of being unable to express myself. But that is not a complete way to do it. To escape the cage of mind and language, we need more tools and methods. Some people express themselves through art, fashion, music, and many other ways. Judging someone based on limited information and dimensions might not be a good way to perceive them. Judging a situation without the full picture or a greater perspective means we might miss out on a large part of the truth. Our beliefs and past experiences interfere with our perspective, putting us in a smaller tunnel vision where we only see smaller parts. I don’t want to fall into this pothole of thoughts.

Language ability is important to discovering myself. Different languages mean different dimensions of ourselves. That is why people might have different personalities when they switch languages. I experienced that when I switched between Vietnamese and English. My English self is so open and straight to the point but somehow sounds naive. Vietnamese is more conservative and focuses on politeness. (Not discussing language, maybe a compilation of its culture)

We should define our values and use that value prism to express and articulate ourselves, and stay sharp. It defines our character, which precisely describes who we are¹. This reminds me of the system prompt of language models, where prompts are added to the beginning of every generation and act as the character of the model at the time. It ensures the model knows what values it should project. Many cracking techniques simply tell the model to ignore the system prompt, leading to a pretty weird character and unstable side of the language models. It’s somehow the same for humans in this matter.

I learned from my experience that I should write down my thoughts. It is a better way to communicate and organize the way I want to express myself. I practice writing down my thoughts here and there, but it’s awesome to do it this way. I feel like I have discovered a part that has always been blurry in my mind.

Miss but an hour's fated meeting, and lifetimes pass before next greeting.