i wrote it in English as it felt strangely more natural.

It is just weird

Raising your hands is just weird. Almost everywhere, almost everyone, at some point, is expected to raise a hand before they say something. Everyone has a plan first — hold it, raise the hand, and when called, say it out loud. It creates a subtle urgency under pressure, like holding your aim on the target, holding your breath, and releasing the trigger the moment you hear the order. It also creates attention-seeking: you raise quicker, higher, in a funnier way, under the pressure of whether you'll be chosen. And as a kid, I'd sometimes raise my hand just to be called on, even when I knew nothing about photosynthesis.

Never changed

People might say those hand-raising moments are long gone with childhood — that the stake of raising a hand in a classroom was close to zero, something to chuckle at looking back. Yet it isn't true. You're just raising your hand at a higher stake now, in an implicit way. Underneath, the same thing happens: you raise your hand, wait to be called, the urgency still there, still seeking attention. From posting on social media to pitching to VCs — you raise your hand, seek attention, wait to be called. Nothing bad about it. It's just funny, to me.

Seeking for what?

So what are you seeking? There are two kinds of hands. When I raised mine to crack a joke instead of answering the photosynthesis question, I had already solved for the room — I bet on the laugh before the hand went up. When I share a thought on something I read, I am solving for no one. Seeking attention, the words bend toward the crowd. Seeking something true, they would stand in an empty room.

Reality

Keeping your hand down is not a smaller confidence. It is a price you decline to pay. Attention scatters focus, pulls you off your aim, spends the energy you were keeping for the work. People will call you shy, passive, sometimes worse. Let them. Most of what is worth doing is done with the hand down, and no one is keeping count.

Bu Xiang (不响)

From a cultural angle it gets stranger. Traditional Chinese culture doesn't reward attention-seeking, and that has hardened into a stereotype — the shy, unconfident Asian. I think that misreads it. It isn't attention-seeking, true, but it is rooted in inner peace: confidence held in reserve. It is 不响 — we mostly keep our hands down, and when we raise them, it is to say the thing we believe is true. The American side means well too: no question is a dumb question, be yourself, yolo. It was meant to remind people they are free to speak. Somewhere it tipped, and began rewarding the raised hand itself — confidence, over-engineered.

M3 on 101

I had a colleague — if you're reading this, forgive me for sharing. We were joking about how young I am, and he said he was young once too. In the 90s he had an E30 M3, and he'd run it past 120 down the 101 with the windows down. He called it the "before" time, and he laughed — three daughters now, a good family, a small electric sedan. Should I take it that I need to drive an M3 my whole life? No. Is it about getting old? No. A person is a complicated thing, and a life is worth living all the way through. It doesn't matter what you drive. Rest on your true intention, and you are on the M3 the whole time.