On the subject of Emergence — thinking, living

something emerging from a visceral truth

My Days (The Notebook Original Broadway Cast Recording)

I have to run away, I have to stay
I’m gonna live a life where I am proud to say
That I followed my joy, I followed my heart
I lived this one wild life, I ripped it apart
I pushed through the corners, with no apologies
And finally, I can say I know the way
I’ll say that I love the way that I spent my days!

w.

Any sort of travelling (no matter how pleasant/unpleasant) prompts the emergence of particular ideas. Being in the train (as I talk about briefly in another card) prompts my reflection of the machinery we are all in. Walking in the city makes me think about what rich and different lives everyone else who is walking in the city are living. Even going to Johor Bahru at peak hour makes me think about the unique labour and social-cultural regimes that tie Singapore and Malaysia.

I think emergence comes from some kind of a change in state, however small. It can be from horizontal (lying down in bed) to vertical (getting up to start the day). Some alternative mode of being is unlocked. Likewise, emerging from one's private space means needing to perform social roles (i.e. daughter, sister, friend, student). The question for me is how do we emerge in our authentic selves? What is an authentic self even? Perhaps that is something to explore in another issue.

y.

The thing that always helps me (and I never do it) is looking at small things on my way. Squatting down to look at snails also on their merry way, individual blades of grass, and all the beautiful critters that are always roaming. I recall how small I am, and how much smaller the world goes. I'm always in a rush these days, trying to maximise the little time I have, and somehow it makes me lose all my time to the things I don't wish to spend on.

I think about emerging from the office. I don't feel that I put it behind me. When I used to leave army camp, I would change out of my uniform, and I would use that as an anchor to try and set the day behind me. I'd like to introduce some sort of ritual to put it away. Right now the thing that works best is going to the gym and getting some movement in.

A close-up photograph evoking stillness and the threshold of emergence.

Just as how a butterfly emerges from its cocoon after a long period of slumber, I wonder if humans have the same feeling and what that may look/feel like. What parts of you are slumbering? When was the last time you felt awakened, refreshed, and renewed?

nature.com

Kivelson & Kivelson: Defining emergence in physics

In this short perspective article, authors Kivelson and Kivelson explore the varied meanings and possible threads of emergence beyond physics.

On ideas that emerge on the move

-w.

Science tells us that moving activates neural networks in varied parts of the brain. In the social sciences, walking, cycling, running, even being in the car, elicits different emotive and cognitive connections, understandings of space, and consequently, understanding of the self. I have found travel to be highly inspirational because different modes of moving through cities — by tram, by boat, the different rhythms of public transport — all reflect a particular vision of what life is like. I take the more whimsical description of moving through space in the form of wandering.

There are many ways to wander. I wander in my walks, often in my head, and my wanderings via public transport in particular have allowed certain ideas about routine, direction, process to surface. I offer three vignettes below that emerged from moving in cities. What emerges is not an end or resolution. It is some idea of the process of moving through life; figuring out how to move through it, hoping the process itself provides some insight or relief.

July 2025, Singapore

Roles, efficiency, and the drudgery of monotony

I’m commuting around the time of the morning peak hour now. In the first five minutes of stepping into the train, for the first time, I understood how working and being in the city might drain the soul out of someone. In plain, muted colours, most commuters were glued to their little screens. The thing is, this train isn’t even as packed as Japan’s or the crush of Istanbul’s trams with bodies sticking up to each other. There is some breathing space. Yet it still infringes on and affects our peripersonal space — the personal space ‘forcefield’ that is impacted by sensuous stimuli from the environment. No wonder that monthly, maybe quarterly escapade feels necessary. Small wonder that we wax poetic about how it feels to be ants in a gleaming metropolis. A break from this highly efficient system that runs like clockwork, that alienates labour, is what makes this bearable.

When Rousseau said that man is born free and everywhere he is in chains, he writes of the social contract where freedom can be achieved despite the constraints of society. We quote him almost in jest. But he IS suggesting a rethinking of freedom and ways of achieving it. Is there a way to find chains that feel less chain-like? A way to find chains that don’t bite as much?

Feb 2026, US

Brief travel on a different train — metathinking and being on a precipice

I’m going to Boston on a little day trip and travel, just being on the train and in a different head/space is so productive.

Being introspective and often going through a schizophrenic, Janusian thinking process mean that reflections tend to feel like they are going nowhere. I’m seldom, if ever, fully satisfied with whatever conclusion I come to. I’m too cognisant of how these outcomes are not static, that my mind will change, that my being is changing every day.

But change is growth. And it is up to the individual to determine the kinds of painful change necessary and the kinds of core identity to stay static. There is a stubbornness too, an unexplainable insistence on seeking change that makes me feel at once illogical and logical at the same time. It’s almost as if I’m on a precipice and tipping over but I insist on walking along it for that sheer thrill of being able to tip over.

Oct 2025, US

Strolling

The walk, putting one foot after another, trying to find paths that enable emergence, novelty, birth and rebirth. It seems increasingly that life is supposed to be like this. I play with all the temporal and spatial scales of being, live and relive each miniscule moment, years turn to seconds and seconds to decades. Attempting to find something I don’t even know the contours of. Flip over the stones of the past — here, a photograph, there a fragment of a memory, and there, a laughter, a moment long gone and past.

And at the end of it all, here I am, back where I am in the beginning of the end and the end of the beginning. Not quite sure where I’ve gone, only the niggling feeling that there has been some movement lingers. The mind wanders. I wander. I wonder.

July 2026, Malaysia

And by way of emergence

We are always emerging into a new day, into a new space, into new selves. This reconfiguration of the self is at times relational, sometimes unconscious, often only obvious retrospectively. Perhaps life is about thinking about possible situations, modes of movement that fosters constant emergence.

everything still emerges

half a year of moving through the rooms of my life

-y.

It’s clear: a lot has happened in my year. This is a stark difference from the last, a year in which it seemed to me that nothing had happened at all. Well, I was stuck struggling in the army all of last year. I can point to the pages and pages of writing of sickness, of heat, of crash outs, but I could never capture it in words. That ended in January. And now, I can never capture it again. It really has lost me. Thank goodness. In those weeks, I felt unforgettably liberated. Last year, it was easy for me to excuse everything. Honestly, I should have excused myself more. To have been grumpy, and petty, and childish, and enraged, and unkind, and whatever perfectly fit my environment. But now, I want to move on from that firmly. How do I keep repeating a pattern I want no part in? How do I remember who I am?

In February, my brother moved out of the house. I moved into his room. My dad moved into my room. I used to live in my parents’ room. So did my dad. And then, my dad moved into the living room. A household is just taking on each other’s shapes. Before that, when I was little, we would use the computer there. We would all share it. We were all in the room then, huddled, looking at whatever was on the screen. I can’t remember the last time we had a meal at home together. I had a dream about this. In it, my mum said, everything will be so different when y. leaves too. I won’t close his windows when it rains. When I wake up, I hear my nephew laughing outside, his mirth, full and contagious, rises through the air like the wind on a sunny summer day of my past, back when life was a garden, rich and loamy, and then it was a storm, waterlogged, and then it was the ground, and I lie there and I stare at passing shadows from the curtains, and at the light. It was so wonderful. And it was so narrow. Now I know. You go past the garden, and the gate, and the walls, and the horizon, and the sea, and you still have worlds. And I’m sorry; I simply must go. To think I’m still emerging. What a place to be in.

I’ve been fully employed since March. It’s been a real doozy. I’m trying to get used to it. I’m very lucky to have this job. I am grateful. And I feel so much frustration. I can’t make the impact I want to. But how many do? I sit on the bus, on the way home from work. In front of me, a man watches AI rich people romance slop on XHS. In front of him, a man seems to be watching right wing commentary on Facebook. I see someone playing Clash Royale. This woman is watching influencer hauls on TikTok. Everyone is so fucking tired. So fucking tired after work. I feel it. I feel the deep exhaustion in my bones. I cannot remember that unforgettable liberation I spoke of, just two paragraphs ago. I know I am not in chains. My heart is beating, it is. There are so many moments of clarity. But there is something here that I cannot beat.

In April and May, I really did feel overwhelmed. My gut was doing as poorly as my mind was. I read through my Saved Messages in Telegram. What a terror it was to report that I felt so much self-actualisation in Toronto. There was a sense of wholeness. And the freedom… the trying… the exploration. And none of this is new. I’ve known. And not to say that I didn’t have those periods of loss. That’s how it always is. There are the cycles. But I really did enjoy looking at them down each turn. I was circling the drain again. What is my vision for my life? What is my ideal life? The sides of myself, the question of myself, it all shifts… I can only ever try to take a glimpse of it from outside, from after. Today, as I write this, I remember that nothing is wasted. The thing is the effort. The journey is the thing. My self-identity is fluid, is becoming, is relational, is emerging, is mine. The beautiful thing about transitions is that I’m all about beginnings.

So here is why we’ve begun this, which we’ve been working on since June. I don’t know what shape it will take. I don’t know if anyone will gain any value from this. I will continue to add features to this little site. Tell me what you want. We wanted to release it today, because things are better done than perfect. Let this site bear the weight of our whole beings. Our beings: the people we are, the people we are becoming, all the people we’ve ever been, and who we are to each other. Let’s be awash with the ideas and hopes that can only live in beginnings. I’ll take this as a reminder to take the self-work more seriously again. Rebirth, regeneration. I will create more, read more, speak more, and face the world more fully than I ever have, and see my place within it. What is my life’s work? If only I could see it all at once…

ps: for the cover image, i did a lil oracle reading this month for who i was, who i am now and who i will be. there’s some truth in it, as there always is! here’s what i got out of it

who i was: scorpion (out of balance)
unresolved, focusing on an event in the past. it’s time to come clean about my feelings so i can get back to my usual (fiery but fun) self.

who i am now: elk
underlying stability and support. i know my values. supportive, kind, and consistent. i need to eat and drink more consciously.

who i will be: stingray
developing sense of self, “spine”. a pivotal moment in personal growth. the moment has come to decide between the old (easy, comfortable, and familiar) and the new (challenging, uncomfortable, and unfamiliar). pressure from family and friends makes the decision even more complicated. it’s time to move through the discomfort.

Life will change and I am part of it and will change too. So will you – James Schuyler, from "The sky eats up the trees," in Collected Poems

henrikkarlsson.xyz

Henrik Karlsson: Unfolding

An alternative way to think about the process of emergence is through unfolding. Karlsson suggests ways to design how one can respond to events and life paths unfolding — paying attention to the feedback loops between context and self, and how to remain aware of new information as events unfold.