As an INTJ, I am accustomed to building models for everything, pursuing logical consistency and optimal solutions. However, on the proposition of “persistence” versus “giving up,” I have discovered a huge contradiction within my logical closed loop. This contradiction hides on the Go board, in the history books I’ve read recently, and within my definition of my own personality.
Last year, I casually re-read 1587, A Year of No Significance, and this year I delved into the history of the Southern Ming Dynasty. I felt a regretful sense of having discovered them far too late. The heaviness of that history resonated strangely with my current confusion. I want to organize these thoughts from the past few days, not only to clarify things for myself but perhaps to offer some reference for others struggling between “reason” and “emotion.”
Go Chess & Life: The Contradiction of “Sacrificing Pieces”#
I discovered an interesting phenomenon while playing Go: I am always bad at sacrificing stones to turn the situation around.
Unless I have calculated the subsequent compensation for sacrificing pieces before making a move, once the situation becomes unfavorable, I often sacrifice a large amount of external influence just to secure life for a group of stones. I feel a bit like the historical critique: “Hesitant to risk oneself for great causes, yet reckless for petty gains.” On the board, I find it hard to accept “ambiguous losses”; I insist on calculating every gain and loss clearly. The result is often sacrificing global initiative for local safety.
But strangely, in life, I am a person who gives up very easily.
I always hold a slight mindset of “non-contention,” showing faint desire for many things. Once I sense that a relationship or something might be heading towards failure, my first reaction is often “it doesn’t matter, I’ll just drop it.” I can leave silently, but I cannot accept returning in disgrace.
Why am I reluctant to sacrifice pieces on the board, yet easily give up in life? Later I understood: because sacrificing pieces on the board is a “loss,” while giving up in life is “control.”
On the board, sacrificing pieces means admitting a current mistake, which is painful for me who pursues optimal solutions; but in life, giving up early means I have mastered the initiative—“I chose not to want it, rather than being eliminated.”
Historical Mirror: When the “Clean Stream” Becomes a Defense#
Reading 1587, A Year of No Significance and the History of the Southern Ming recently, this feeling was particularly strong.
The people in those books, whether it was the Grand Secretaries trapped in the bureaucratic system or the self-righteous “Clean Stream” moralists of the late Ming, often placed moral fastidiousness above survival strategy. To maintain the “orthodoxy” and “honor” in their hearts, they would rather perish in internal strife than make pragmatic compromises. That “sense of fatalism”—as if structure determines the outcome and all effort is futile—once resonated deeply with me.
I suddenly felt like certain scholars of that era.
In some important experiences in the past, I firmly believed that certain contradictions were irreconcilable, as if the ending was destined. Whenever problems arose, I would stand by and watch, thinking to myself: “I predicted long ago that we would fail.”
I never truly tried to change anything; I just used “prophecy” to escape the “process.”
History books showed me the powerlessness of systems and the limitations of human nature. I used these narratives to build a perfect logical closed loop: Since the trend of history cannot be violated, and human flaws cannot be changed, then my “giving up” is a form of clarity, not cowardice.
Back then, I liked tragedies, feeling they had more expressive power. Thinking about it now, that was because tragedies align with logical deduction, while happy endings require emotional investment and the adventure of uncertainty.
I preserved the rational correctness of “I knew it would fail long ago,” but lost the life experience of “we could have tried.” This is exactly “In peaceful times, sitting idle discussing morality; in crisis, offering a single death to repay the king”—empty talk is easy, action is hard. We use historical fatalism to cover up our cowardice in action. The highest standard of morality cannot replace actual survival strategies; rational correctness cannot replace the experience of life.
Core Code: “I May Not Win, But I Cannot Lose”#
After deep analysis, I discovered a line of core code at the bottom of my personality:
“I may not win, but I cannot lose. I can leave silently, but I cannot return in disgrace.”
My tolerance for “loss” is very high. Compressing my desires is something easier to do stably. As long as I don’t want it, you can’t deprive me of it; as long as I leave early, I won’t look awkward.
This “high tolerance” is actually a defense mechanism.
I haven’t truly seen through everything; I am afraid of the self-falsification that comes from “failure after investment.” I’m not afraid of losing things; I’m afraid of losing the “sense of control” and “correctness.”
Thus, there are things truly worth fighting for that I also give up due to path dependence. I use the carefree attitude of “it doesn’t matter if I lose it” to cover up the fear of “not daring to go all out.”
It’s like a knight with the strongest armor who never truly charges into battle because he’s afraid of scratching the armor. I compressed my vitality into a safe logical box, exchanging stability for the texture of “being alive.”
Reading history, I wondered: Did Shi Kefa not know Yangzhou would inevitably fall? He knew. Did those anti-Qing volunteers of the Southern Ming not know they would lose? They knew. But they chose to burn. As for me, I chose to preserve the spark, but let the spark slowly extinguish inside the box. The success or failure of history is often not determined by humans, but one’s posture can be determined by oneself.
Turning Point: Haven’t “Thrown Caution to the Wind” in a Long Time#
Until recently, I realized: I haven’t experienced acting without regard for personal consequences in a long time.
The essence of “throwing caution to the wind” is actively surrendering control. It is knowing you might lose, yet still putting up the chips; knowing you might get hurt, yet still exposing your vulnerabilities.
For me, accustomed to rational calculation, this is equivalent to “suicide.” So I haven’t done it in a long time.
But I also suddenly realized that my high tolerance for loss should have been my greatest asset for “throwing caution to the wind.”
Most people dare not go all out because they are afraid they can’t afford to lose. As for me? I can clearly afford to lose, yet I use this ability to ensure I don’t lose.
What if I used this “tolerance” differently? Not to tolerate “indifference after loss,” but to tolerate “frustration after investment.” Not to tolerate “the ease of leaving,” but to tolerate “the pain of persisting.”
Since I can accept the fatalism in the flood of history and accept the tragedy of dynasty changes, why can’t I accept a “personal-style” failure? Since I can look coldly at the rise and fall of history, why can’t I tolerate a little messiness in my own life?
A Suggestion About Starbucks#
I previously talked about “perfectionism” with a colleague. He gave me a seemingly absurd suggestion:
“Go to a busy Starbucks by yourself, and shout out: ‘Who is willing to buy me a free cup of coffee?’”
He said doing this is to let me know that people in this world actually don’t care about my success or failure. Even if rejected, even if stared at, the earth keeps turning, and no one will remember the awkwardness of that moment. All my worries are just wrongly projecting my self-consciousness onto everyone else.
This is an experiment about “desensitization.”
Rationally, I completely understand the psychological logic behind it—the “Spotlight Effect” is just a cognitive bias. But until today, I still dare not try it.
This suggestion is like a mirror, reflecting the fears in my subconscious: I’m not afraid of that cup of coffee; I’m afraid of the “out-of-control situation,” afraid of the “possibility of being scrutinized,” afraid of being unable to maintain “composure” in that moment.
This is essentially the same fear as my “cherishing myself” on the chessboard, my “leaving” in life, and the “Clean Stream” in history. I take myself too seriously, so seriously that I don’t allow any uncontrollable noise to appear in life.
I hope one day I can take this step. Not for the coffee, but to prove: I can allow myself to be messy, and the world remains safe.