Click. Click. Click. It was a Thursday. And like any other Thursday, I was typing away at my computer, writing lines of code as my duties in software engineering. After work, I usually go to the local gym and work out- grinding my muscles through hard contractions as I squat, bench, and deadlift barbells, a contrast to a full day of sitting. Today will be no different. But unlike other Thursdays, I was going to a lecture after. A lecture from whom I was very excited for: Andrew Huberman, host of the Huberman Lab podcast, which presents studies and biological mechanisms useful to optimize daily life. While his voice would grace my ears once more, it would not be through the earbuds connected to my phone but though the speakers live at the opera house.
As I made my way towards the opera house, the city lights became brighter. Frantic to be on time, I nudged myself past all the well dressed crowds for other broadway musicals being played at the same time. My dishevelled appearance blanketed underneath my loose grey sweatshirt, I finally saw the opera house with a sign illuminating the bright city sidewalk: “DR. ANDREW HUBERMAN TONIGHT - SOLD OUT!”
…
I was happy as I walked out of the theatre. The show was nearly 3 hours, yet felt like 30 minutes. Certainly preferring the art of lectured words on bodily optimizing over the art of acting and singing on love, revolution, or whatever else, I anchored as a rock against the flow of exit-ors and savoured the moment. I replayed show’s highlights in my head as I stood underneath the aging grandiose elegance of the opera lobby. While the show followed in the same scientific vein as his podcast with presentation on breathing techniques to quickly de-escalate stress levels and regular cold showers to increase stress capacity, its main focus (and my favourite part) was perhaps the least scientific and most anecdotal amongst all of his content: delight.
Early in the lecture, he dove a little into his background. As a young child, he was entranced by the humble encyclopedia and would spend the whole weekend reading, hypnotized by the simple and interesting facts about the world. When Monday rolled around, having worn down his teacher over months of wanting to share information he deemed “cool”, he would have his own show and tell, excitingly presenting his learnings to the class at the beginning of the school day. Just like that, before a gruelling elementary school day of boring math, English, and science, little Andrew dove into medieval weapons, fauna, countries, and whatever he had read that preceding weekend to the dismay of his classmates.
There was something beautiful about his simple presentation. Though the show felt like a broadway musical- being hosted in an elegant opera theatre adjacent to several congruent broadway shows- the show was truly unpretentious. It was simply a lecture from a 48 year old man in a black collard shirt, black denim jeans, and matching black Adidas sneakers with a microphone in front of onlookers, revealing the biological mysteries ingrained in our humanity. Yes he is famous and wealthy. Yes he is a tenured professor at Stanford University. Yes he is friends with high profile individuals- references to Lex Friedman and Rick Rubin littered his lecture. But as he masterfully interweaved through his lecture on neuroplasticity, stress, and his deceased mentors, and transitioned into answering questions on hypnotherapy, sleeping protocols for long shift workers, and the asterisks behind the benefits of psychedelics, the world slowly fell away to reveal his simple childhood delight of sharing information with people. In the three hours of speaking, he wasted no time drinking water or gasping for air as he shared his accumulated wisdoms, undeterred by the bright lights nor the thousands of individuals staring. He was that kid who presented in front of his elementary school peers, revelling in deeper realities in exchange to the superficial ones present in that very moment.
The central topic of delight in the lecture was not implied. He stated (and I paraphrase): we need to retrace back into our lives in what gave us so much delight as a child, when we were unpolluted by the realities of life and free from the shackles of responsibilities, money, and prestige. And when we find that delight- and we will know when we find it- we should freely follow it as if we were children chasing after that butterfly, ball, or rainbow which always captivated us to explore. The truth of the pursuit in this delight is that we may not get anything out of it. There are no directions along the vector of metrics that may be optimized with this pursuit of innocent delight. And that is ok. Under life’s daily stresses and hidden weight of despair, these sources of delight fuel us to pursue what “really matters.”
I suspect every individual has something in which he or she can be delighted by. One of Huberman’s delight was the unexpected intelligence of cuttle fish.
After a bit of reflection, I noticed a pattern in my interests: full length album listening, poker, powerlifting, valuation methods of companies, contemporary art museums, and now fashion and sewing. The pattern did not lie in their subject matter (these things are not necessarily similar in any regard), but lie in their source. All these interests sprouted out of curiosity. Curiosity of random things was my innocent childhood delight. Despite being at a moderate baseline stress level in daily life, I found joy picking up new random things. It made me happy.
I realized more behind the flaw of my younger thinking. Growing up with wanting to be productive every minute of my waking days, I saw these curiosities not as innocent beacons of delight, but as tools to optimize facets of decision making, to become more extroverted, or to hustle for side income. Ironically, because I saw these curiosities in these shades of productivity, I no longer saw the beauty in the interests themselves and became unproductive. I lost the magic of childhood delight. The lightness of exploring my curiosity was not pure and innocent, but spoiled by my realities of life: my expectations to be “productive” and ultimately someone I could admire.
To wrap everything up, my key take aways from Huberman’s presentation could be summarized as the following:
Start doing cold showers in the morning
Though the brain stays neuroplastic throughout life, it must be challenged with new controlled stressor (ie: new hobbies) for growth
Interests and hobbies should be pursued for the pure purpose of childhood delight~