Humanize thyself: Some year end reflections
It's been a painful yet formative year. Looking back before looking ahead
Hi friends 👋
Welcome to Health & Wealth — your weekly source of the latest health research and biotech trends. Wishing you a gentle, loving, restful holiday season ✨
This week I’m channeling the calmer, reflective energy I’ve been feeling by sharing some year-end reflections and lessons learned. These prompts were from the Foster Community, a writer’s community I recently joined. In-depth analyses will be back in January 2022.
What over the past year has made you angry about this world? What is not fair?
People who expend an unreasonable amount of energy hating on people or things they don’t have sufficient context on. It’s easy to hate, but it’s far more challenging to build, create, or change something.
Binary thinking, ad hominem attacks, oppression Olympics (competing over who has it “worse”) — things usually have far greater nuance and complexity than what is seen at first glance. The truth usually falls somewhere in between two polarized extremes.
What worries you most about the future? What change would you like to see?
Label-driven camps of thought replacing curiosity-led truth seeking. Calling someone a name — racist, eugenicist, misogynist, etc. — is a cop-out. Instead:
What is it about a person or issue that bothers you, and what can you do about it? (Besides complaining on Twitter.)
On the flip side, how can you be a thoughtful world citizen to leave things better than when you found them? (And not give others the impression you’re an *XYZ negative attribute*).
What excites you about the future?
The explosion of biotechnology here to reshape human life!
Just think — mRNA vaccines arrived in the nick of time to save millions of people from a global plague. Humanity didn’t have that shit in the bubonic plague.
As much as COVID has been a destructive force, its legacy has also made biology cool again — the average person has become much more interested in diagnostics, mRNA therapeutics, drug discovery, etc.
I genuinely believe that the 21st century is the biology century. Biology has historically been systems and organism-based but is becoming increasingly cellular and molecular-based.
I’m especially excited about:
advances on extending healthy human healthspan
how synthetic biology can create new types of products that can impact all of us — environment, human health, food sources
personalization of medicine to take into account the complexity of human biology and human variation
Medicine is still rudimentary in many ways. We give big overarching labels — autism, hypertension, depression — without satisfying explanations. I look forward to getting closer to the ground truth — using science to answer the hardest questions about our bodies (and how to intervene when things aren’t working right).
Is there something that doesn’t make sense to you? Maybe it’s even a bit funny?
The dichotomy between how fast the biotech and genomics field is moving compared to how conservative and skeptical the medical community (by and large) is still. Being clinically trained as a genetic counselor myself, I’ve seen this firsthand.
Valuation of companies — what does a number at a given point in time really mean? I’m often baffled by valuations.
How FinTwit is a double edge sword. FinTwit can expose you to valuable information you wouldn’t otherwise come across but can make you vulnerable to herd mentality and making investment decisions out of FOMO.
What do you need to grieve about from the past year?
The toll that my last job took on me mentally and emotionally — from the indescribably painful and traumatic experience of having the startup I worked at receive an onslaught of Twitter hate to the sense of failure I felt for “giving up” by leaving.
While ultimately a blip in my life, this past year has forced me to grow up in ways I sometimes wished I didn’t have to.
When did you fall in love with a new activity? Why did you fall in love with this?
Writing online through Health & Wealth! It’s helped accelerate my learning and sharpen my thinking. Writing publicly is like tidying up your home before guests visit — except you’re tidying up your mind before people read your writing.
What wisdom did you gain this year and how did you gain it?
Everyone is human. Behind every company are humans trying their best.
Life is a continual experiment & exploration of what's true. I might not always be right, but I aim to be increasingly less wrong.
Hate is the least productive reaction to have. It ripples through & hurts those you didn't intend to hurt.
Believe deeply in the goodness and ingenuity of people to improve and advance humanity — despite all our flaws, cognitive biases, and setbacks.
These days, I let my curiosity guide me.
I don’t jump to strong opinions, not because I'm not aware of things, but because it takes me a long time to build a sense of conviction.
More than anything, I seek to understand and communicate clearly.
Most popular posts on Health & Wealth
Since launching Health & Wealth this fall, I’ve published in-depth essays on genomics, aging, synthetic biology, personalized nutrition, and biotech companies.
Here’s what most resonated with people:
Top 3 Most Read Posts
Bionano Genomics: The Swiss Army knife of cytogenetic testing — and more
MaxCyte's snowball effect: Riding on the shoulders of top CRISPR companies
Ginkgo Bioworks: Audacious vision — but unproven track record playing in major league
Posts that scratched my curiosity itch
The Cambrian explosion of CGM-based personalized nutrition programs
A test to measure how fast you age — and whether you could be aging better
Bezos funded longevity startup, Altos Labs — more than just clickbait (hopefully)
Don’t be a Grinch! Share Health & Wealth 🎄
In the spirit of humanizing thyself — I’d like to personally thank some of my most engaged readers. No obligation to reply, but don’t be alarmed if you do get a direct email from me 😉
Excited to continue this journey together in the New Year 🎉
Christina
"Is there something that doesn’t make sense to you? Maybe it’s even a bit funny?"
These three are the most interesting part of your post! Can you give an example of each of these three?