Much of my early childhood and teenage years were a competition of who could escape to survive. I quickly observed that, in immigration and institutions that were scarcely meritocratic, the way out was to comply with leadership: know the people who had the power, and do as their systems dictated.

The fastest way to climb a ladder to freedom was to hold your breath, ignore hypocrises and questions, keep your head down, comply, and come out the other end with minimal damage.

This philosophy began to bleed over into my academic and career pursuits - it was no longer a question of survival, but it had permeated and embedded into how I saw everything and everyone around me. How could I get to a point of stability and relative success as soon as possible? (You see, neither of those had ever come easily to my family. I desperately wanted to break the cycle).

For years, I followed instructions to a tee: I outwardly believed and respected everything that governments, institutions, managers, teachers, etc. told me: I picked one domain (legal at the time), and, without exploring, without questioning anyone or anything; I gave it everything I had. I became extremely well-versed in what steps I needed to follow, what timeline would give me the edge, and everything up to the point of my retirement was charted. No deviations allowed.

Then a piece of tofu changed my life.

First year of university. Dinner from the dining hall that eventful night had been soy-glazed tofu. I scarfed it down and ~5h later was hit with the most agonizing stomach pain I had ever felt. Imagine someone wringing your gut like a towel. I spent about 6 hours that night in the mucky communal bathroom of my 1800s-built dorm, trying to muffle my pain and swatting the flies gathering around me, hoping nobody would walk in.

For the next 5 months, everything I ate caused the same reaction. At least 6 hours of each day was spent in so much agony I couldn’t do anything but lay in bed and cry. I went to 7 GI specialists and doctors, but they couldn't pinpoint my condition; after they did, I learned there was no cure. Still dealing with those consequences today.

It was in that recovery phase that I realized a few things (that are true to me, anyways):

• life is short. Do things you have conviction in, and think carefully about what you have conviction in, because there is no 'free trial' period to life. This is the real deal.

• the brain-gut connection is real. Neuroscience, emotional regulation, even your social environment (isolation) have a legitimate impact on sensory science and consumption - there's so much we have yet to discover.

• without health you have nothing. Spending 1/4 of each day feeling like unproductive crap was a consequence of taking poor care of my well-being for years.

• what goes on inside people's heads are invisible yet profound.

On a more philosophical level:

• overflowing stress and a lack of passion/happiness can translate to physical health issues. Nobody takes this serious when they're young, but they should.

• if you won’t enjoy life and take care of yourself, nobody else will.

• if you’re in your teens/20s, you shouldn’t be optimizing for climbing corporate ladders, making boatloads of money, or working for prestige. if you don’t explore now, when?