For Sam, the most comfortable place in the world was his ergonomic chair, in front of three screens flickering with code. As a senior programmer, he could build amazing architectures in the virtual world. But in the real world, he struggled to even say a simple "hello."

Next Wednesday, his company was sending him to an important industry tech conference. The news landed on Sam's chest like a lead weight. He knew it was a golden opportunity to network and learn about cutting-edge tech, crucial for his career.

But he couldn't stop picturing the scene: elegantly dressed people holding glasses, chatting and laughing in small groups. And him, standing awkwardly in a corner, clutching a glass of soda, pretending to look at his phone, feeling completely invisible.

"What would I even talk about? What if I say the wrong thing? What if no one talks to me?"

These questions spun in his head, making his palms sweat every time. He even considered faking an illness to get out of it.

The night before he planned to talk to his manager, he stumbled upon a web app a friend was using, an online divination service. He saw a screenshot his friend shared, and the interpretation seemed quite philosophical. On a whim, he opened the site himself.

He awkwardly typed in his problem: "I'm terrified of attending social events. How can I overcome this?"

The result was "Kong Wang" (Emptiness), a term that didn't sound very promising. Sam's heart sank a little, but when he read the interpretation below, he was stunned.

"Emptiness is not nothingness; it is infinite possibility. What you fear is the unknown gaze, not a real judgment. Let go of the obsession with being 'perfect.' Treat every conversation like 'debugging' a piece of code. Allowing for 'bugs' is the only way to iterate towards a better 'version.'"

"Allowing for bugs..." Sam whispered to himself. As a metaphor, it clicked instantly.

When he coded, he was never afraid of bugs. Finding them and fixing them was how he improved, how the program became more robust. Why was he demanding a 'perfect, bug-free run' from himself in a social setting?

He realized he had been treating socializing like a final 'production release' instead of a continuous 'development and testing' phase. He wasn't afraid of other people; he was afraid of his own perfectionism.

That night, he didn't script what he was going to say at the event, but he prepared three technical questions he was genuinely interested in. If he didn't know what to say, he decided, he would ask for others' opinions. He lowered his goal from "becoming the life of the party" to "having a brief chat with three people."

On Wednesday evening, he was still nervous. But as he walked into the venue, he told himself, "Time to start debugging."

He took a deep breath, walked over to a guest who was looking at a technical poster, and asked his first prepared question. The person responded warmly, and they fell into a discussion.

He didn't become a social butterfly that night, but he managed to exchange contacts with four people and even found a developer who shared one of his niche hobbies.

On his way home, for the first time, Sam felt that the world beyond the code wasn't so scary after all.