Category: Life

It is close to mid-day and wind is blowing with a ferocity that reflects Mother Nature’s fury. The temperature today is going to soar to 37 degrees.

The grass fire that was brought under control at Pialligo yesterday (which led to the evacuation) has reignited and is showing a red alert.

Another one has broken out in Phillip, just 3 kms away from my home and is showing out-of-control in the Fire Alert App I have downloaded on my phone.

I wouldn’t have known but for my daughter who texted to alert me. That pressed the panic button. I should prepare to flee. If the wind brings fire to my direction, it will not take it long to reach my home. My non-existent fire plan has just two water hoses which will be completely ineffective in this wind. I will not be able to save the house that is evident. Fleeing is my only option.

If I am to run away, which will be at the notice of five-minutes, what will I take with me? It is a question like the one I tackled once in a writing workshop – if you find out you are going to die in six months, what will you do in those six months?

Just like I would live my life condensed in six months, I should pick up the things that matter the most. But which ‘things’ mattered the most? What should I take with me?

I go from room to room trying to figure out. What can I salvage and what can I leave at the mercy of the fires? Perhaps nothing. All that clutter, which is a cause so much frustration on a daily basis suddenly feels so endearing. This clutter is somehow attached to my identity. It can’t imagine my life without these unnecessary things I have collected over the years.

Or, can I?

I know fully-well that when the time comes, I will leave everything as it is. I will save my life and life of my loved ones more than anything else. And when I come back, after the havoc, to the site where my house stood one day, I will cry for their loss. The things I thought I couldn’t live without will now live in my memory and I will continue to live my life.

This is how versatile we are. We spend our lives working like mad, earning money so that we can buy lots of things, well aware that none of them matter. Yet it is so hard to part with them. They do have some sort of meaning in our lives. Our possessions root us. To the place where we live. They bring a sense of belonging. Without them, we feel empty.

Maybe this trait of defining our identity with the stuff we accumulate separates us from other animals whose existence is complete without any possession. While ours depend on our possessions. The more we have, the more settled we feel.

As I think of these wild thoughts, I begin to understand the agony of hundreds of people who have lost their houses to fires in the last few weeks. The whole nation is mourning over their loss but as Joan Didion said, “Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.”

Winds are getting fiercer and fiercer. I am feeling a curious blend of anxiety and calmness. It is one of those moments when you just want to leave everything in God’s hands and resort to prayer. A place of hope at a time of helplessness.

I move from room to room making a mental note of things I should grab if I have the time and the inclination to do it but make no move to gather them in boxes as I did seventeen-years-ago when a terrible fire took Canberra in its grip and burned hundreds of houses. While I do that I take pictures of the ‘things’ in each room so that I could morn them if fires consume them.

I wish you well. I pray for your homes to remain safe. And I beg forgiveness from Mother Nature.

The new year. New energy. A time to make a new promise to yourself.

A promise most of the people will break before the first week of the first month is over.

This year do something different.

Don’t set a new year resolution.

You read it right. It is me saying that. The one who is big on daily tasks, weekly projects and monthly goals.

All those things are fine. I work well with them. But a year is too long. A lot can happen in 12 months. Life has a way of surprising us. Remember the age-old saying – “Man proposes, God disposes” 

The trouble with setting New Year resolutions is that each year we set higher and higher standards for ourselves. We already have so much on our plate. We don’t need to put ourselves with more anxiety, more pressure.

It is time to accept that you are not your accomplishments. Your existence is not just for meeting goals. Your existence is to be here. In the moment. To be present in whatever state you are in.

You are not to under-promise and over-deliver. You don’t need to continually improve. You are not a Fortune 500 company which has to show more profit each year. You are a living being. And like any other living being whether it is a bird, or a fish, or a dog, or a cat you have a right to be here.

Have you ever seen a cat setting a New Year Resolution? For her, today is like any other day. As long as she gets food and water and comfortable surroundings it is a perfect day for her.

Why can’t it be the same for us? Why do we have to make our own lives miserable by setting higher and higher goals?

If anything, we need to cut out some of the trivial things from our lives.

“You do not need to waste your time doing those things that are unnecessary and trifling. You do not have to be rich. You do not need to seek fame or power. What you need is freedom, solidity, peace and joy. You need the time and energy to be able to share these things with others.”

― Thích Nhất Hạnh, No Death, No Fear

As far as your writing goals are concerned, just understand one thing. Rather than setting a goal that I will finish the book this year or I will write a million words by the end of the year, just think of writing as a daily practice.

That is what writing actually is. A daily practice. Just like cooking or having a shower. It is simply something you do every day, whether for fifteen minutes or one hour. If you make it a daily routine, just like cooking or having a shower, it will not be such a scary thing.

You don’t need to worry about the quality or quantity of your writing. Just write. If you write daily, both quality and quantity will improve.

And let go of the thought, this year, that you are not a writer until you are published. If you write, you are a writer.

“You are what you want to become. Why search anymore? You are a wonderful manifestation. The whole universe has come together to make your existence possible. There is nothing that is not you. The kingdom of God, the Pure Land, nirvana, happiness, and liberation are all you.”

― Thich Nhat Hanh

Let this decade be the decade to free yourself from any expectations, mostly of your own.

Enjoy the new year to its fullest!

I own a lot of stuff. I bet you do too.

Beds, dressers, lounges, chaises, bookshelves, suitcases, chests, dining tables, meal tables, coffee tables, corner tables, study tables, bedside tables, outdoor tables, lots and lots of tables.

I have a six-bedroom house that houses all this furniture.

I also have lots of kitchenware — stainless steel pots, non-stick pans, crock pots, dishes, bowls, pottery, glasses, crystal ware, silverware, cutlery, and appliances to do everything. My kitchen is overflowing with things that I have not used for years. Many are still lying in the storeroom in their original packing (yes, I have a proper store-room).

I have countless books — cookbooks, reference books, coffee table books, writing books, law economics, accounting books, fiction and non-fiction books, encyclopedias, dictionaries, atlases, and history books. I have books on Australia and books about India.

A vast majority of them are unread.

My husband and I have been buying books ever since we got married with the hope of reading them when we retire. I have been ‘retired’ for almost a year now, and I still haven’t even gone through any of them. But I keep on buying more and borrowing more. There is something about unread books. They are like having a wise man in the closet, we may never ask his counsel, but the knowledge he is there is very reassuring.

I have a lot of stuff on the walls too—family photos, modern art, huge tapestries, wall panels, wooden carvings, photographic prints. I have canvases too—canvases with pictures and canvases with words, like the one in my kitchen.

I am not even counting wedding albums, videos, old bulky photo albums, new sleek photo books and boxes, and boxes of prints. They are sacred.

So are my husband’s stamp collection, coin collection, knife collection, and crystalware. According to my husband, they are family treasures, not to be subjected to spring cleaning. They occupy the most protected and prime cupboard space.

His shoes, however, can stay in the garage, although when we ran out of space in the garage, twenty pairs had to be accommodated in the storeroom along with his wine collection.

My vices are clothes, stationery, and art supplies.

I have stopped buying decoration pieces and souvenirs, but I still buy stationery items. There are never enough notebooks and journals, and there is no joy more than finding a smooth pen that glides on paper.

Other things I don’t care about anymore. Maybe my overstuffed brain prefers barer surroundings now. The time when one’s self-worth is attached to the amount, and monetary value of the stuff they own is gone. Now is the time to simplify.

It was Thoreau who said, “Simplify, simplify.”

Hans Hofmann explained it better, “The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”

We accumulate things as if we are never going to die.

But stuff demands responsibility. It needs to be dusted, insured, and according to Anna Quindlen, “willed to someone without hurting someone else’s feelings.”

I am well aware of the havoc my possessions are going to cause to my children. I have a vision of my daughters after I’m gone, looking around and saying, “What are we going to do with all this stuff?”

A friend of mine told me it took her a whole year to get rid of stuff when she downsized. It will take me many years.

Stuff also demands emotional energy. I am finding it hard to part with my things. There are too many memories attached to them.

So what I do instead?

I rearrange.

I take everything out of a shelf (like Marie Kondo suggests) and then put it back again (unlike what Marie Kondo’s suggests). Rather than asking, “Does this sparks joy?” I ask, “Is there anything I can part with? The usual answer is “No.”

Charities are not the solution anymore.

As I am writing this, the news on TV is that the charities are swamped with unusable donations. Each year 80,000 tons of rubbish is dumped in Australia’s charity bins, which is costing them 18 million dollars to get rid of.

What is the solution then?

Stop adding to the stuff.

My children are my role models now. Their apartments have bare minimal necessities. Their stuff has a purpose, a role, a point.

Stuff is not just things. Our heads are full of stuff too. Between the stuff at work and the stuff at home, our heads’ filing cabinets are not only full, but they are overflowing.

I am beginning to believe that our memories are failing because they run out of RAM (Random Access Memory). Today we have more on our hard discs than anyone at any time in history. Work deadlines, meeting schedules, project milestones, Gantt charts, social engagements, doctor’s appointments, family commitments, birthdays, and anniversaries. Stuff, stuff, more stuff.

Like physical stuff, we need to spring clean mental stuff too. Remember, “eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”

How has 2019 been for you? Or rather the whole decade?

Did you come far? Achieved all that you wanted to achieve?

Or was it a terrible decade with all its economic doom and gloom, crazy heads-of- states (surely there are more than one), drought, natural disasters and with climate change thrown in just for fun.

I have good news for you.

Matt Ridley has reported in SPECTATOR that this has been the best decade in human history.

He has been watching closely and this is what he has observed:

We are living through the greatest improvement in human living standards in history. Extreme poverty has fallen below 10 percent of the world’s population for the first time. It was 60 percent when I was born. Global inequality has been plunging as Africa and Asia experience faster economic growth than Europe and North America; child mortality has fallen to record low levels; famine virtually went extinct; malaria, polio and heart disease are all in decline.

Does that make you feel better?

It didn’t to me. I am more concerned about the things that aren’t going well.

Matt’s response to bad stuff is: “Bad things keep on happening while the world still keeps on getting better. It has done so over the course of this decade at a rate that has astonished even starry-eyed me.”

Perhaps one of the least fashionable predictions I made nine years ago was that ‘the ecological footprint of human activity is probably shrinking’ and ‘we are getting more sustainable, not less, in the way we use the planet’. That is to say: our population and economy would grow, but we’d learn how to reduce what we take from the planet. And so it has proved. An MIT scientist, Andrew McAfee, recently documented this in a book called More from Less, showing how some nations are beginning to use less stuff: less metal, less water, less land. Not just in proportion to productivity: less stuff overall.

…

In 2011 Chris Goodall, an investor in electric vehicles, published research showing that the UK was now using not just relatively less ‘stuff’ every year, but absolutely less. Events have since vindicated his thesis. The quantity of all resources consumed per person in Britain (domestic extraction of biomass, metals, minerals and fossil fuels, plus imports minus exports) fell by a third between 2000 and 2017, from 13.7 tons to 9.4 tons. That’s a faster decline than the increase in the number of people, so it means fewer resources consumed overall.

I can definitely relate to this. I know I am on the starting point of (just starting point) of reducing my footprint. Although it will take me another decade to reach the optimum point. But the change has begun and that is a positive sign.

Minimalism is one thing Syd Robinson lists the 18 Things This Decade Will Be Remembered For along with the rise of smartphones, Netflix, Meme culture, social media, Millennials, beginning of automation, social and political change and of course Obama and Trump.

It is hard to believe how much has changed in the last ten years ago but it’s even harder to fathom how much more is going to change in the next decade.

Change is coming faster than any of us can predict. Which makes life hard as well as interesting. How will it turn out for you will depend on how do you respond to the interesting times.

The best way is to become an interesting person in interesting times.

Photo by Tomas Robertson on Unsplash

Recently, in a cartoon drawing course, I created a character who immediately took over and started showing her true colors.

I named her Ms. Jolly and she is turning out to be an interesting character. Even though she is still in the making, she is gathering a following of her own on Instagram where I post her daily adventures.

Her popularity made me think what makes her so interesting.

That question reminded me of a story I recently read about the novelist and short story writer Barry Hannah.

A student gets her story back from Barry, with honest criticism on it, “This just isn’t interesting.”

The student, a whiner, complained, “What can I do to make it interesting? ”

Barry, looked long and hard at the student, decided she was earnest about becoming a better writer, and told her the truth, “Try making yourself a more interesting person.”

Boomrang and Never Die

It seems like ‘being an interesting person’ is imperative for writers.

The usual image of a writer is that of someone in pajamas, sitting behind a desk with piles of paper, diligently typing away in a dark room.

But when I drew Ms. Jolly writing on her desk she came in the complete opposite way. She was dressed properly, complete with high heels, and was working from a clean desk.

How can one become an interesting person? It sounds like too much of hard work for introverts like me.

Well, it is not.

The recipe to be an interesting person is simple.

Do interesting things. That’s all.

Ms. Jolly is interesting because she is finding interesting things to do.

Interesting people have interesting lives not because they are interesting but because they are doing interesting things.

There are many roads to becoming an interesting person, but they all involve developing your curiosity and your desire to know and understand — yourself, others, the world around you. You can read. You can pursue a new activity like knitting or rock climbing. You can volunteer. You can commit to asking three people a day an open-ended question about themselves and really listening to their responses. You can share your information and connections freely.

J. Maureen Henderson

A person participating in archeological digs is an interesting person because he has so many stories to tell.

A person making movies with his phone camera and winning the amateur short film award is an interesting person. He has a lot to share, most people wouldn’t even bother to learn all the features of their phone camera.

A novelist traveling to the north pole to experience the northern lights so that she can use them as a setting in her novel is an interesting person. How many people do you know who would do that?

Austin Kleon wrote in his book Show Your Work!:
If you want followers, be someone worth following. [“Have you tried making yourself more interesting?”] seems like a really mean thing to say, unless you think of the word interesting the way writer Lawrence Weschler does: For him, to be “interest-ing” is to be curious and attentive, and to practice “the continual projection of interest.” To put it more simply: If you want to be interesting, you have to be interested.

Maybe that was the reason that I enrolled for a cartoon drawing course this year which lead to the creation of Ms. Jolly.

That could be the reason why I was reading, researching and blogging about my travel from the bus and on the airports when everyone else was having a nap or strolling around aimlessly.

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Jessica Hagy writes in How to Be Interesting: (In 10 Simple Steps): Being interesting is about taking chances. It is also about taking daily vacations. About being childlike, not childish. It’s about ideas, creativity, risk. It’s about trusting your talents and doing only what you want—but having the courage to get lost and see where the path leads. Because it’s what you don’t know that’s interesting.

It is about living at the intersection of wonder, awe, and curiosity.

Go on, do something.

The happiest people are not those who have everything they ever wanted, but are those who love what they do.

But it is not easy to find what you love to do.

Some people know what they want to do even when they are in their infancy; others keep drifting from one thing to another, never sure what their calling is.

The problem with drifters is that they believe that their purpose is something that will sweep them off their feet, and they will glide through it fulfilling their destiny feeling each day on the seventh heaven.

Do you think Mother Teresa felt that way while helping the poor and destitute each day of her life?

To do something well you have to like it. That idea is not exactly novel. We’ve got it down to four words: “Do what you love.” But it’s not enough just to tell people that. Doing what you love is complicated.

Paul Graham wrote a great article in 2006, How to Do What You Love. Although the article is directed towards youth to help them find the work they would love to do, it has nuggets for people who are finding their true calling.

According to him:

Although doing great work takes less discipline than people think—because the way to do great work is to find something you like so much that you don’t have to force yourself to do it—finding work you love does usually require discipline.

Paul provides a three-point test to determine whether something is your calling or not.

The first is the prestige test. Is it prestigious work or not?

If it is not, and you will still continue to do it, it is your calling.

Prestige is the opinion of the rest of the world. If you do anything well enough, you’ll make it prestigious. Plenty of things we now consider prestigious were anything but at first. Jazz comes to mind—though almost any established art form would do. So do what you like, and let prestige take care of itself.

He goes on to say:

… if you admire two kinds of work equally, but one is more prestigious, you should probably choose the other. Your opinions about what’s admirable are always going to be slightly influenced by prestige, so if the two seem equal to you, you probably have more genuine admiration for the less prestigious one.

The second is the money test. Will it make you loads of money?

The test is whether you will still continue to do it even if you won’t get paid for it even if you will have to work at another job to make a living.

How many doctors or corporate lawyers would do their current work if they had to do it for free, in their spare time, and take day jobs as waiters to support themselves?

It is easy to do unpleasant work; with money and prestige, it is hard to do something for the love of it.

You are beginning to get the picture.

Now comes the third test. It is in just two words, so pay attention.

Always produce.

If you are working in a soul-wrenching job and plan to become a writer, are you producing? Are you writing pages of fiction, however bad? As long as you’re producing, you’ll know you’re not just dreaming but working towards your dream. The toil you will put yourself through for no money, no prestige to develop the talent will determine whether the writing is your calling or not.

“Always produce” is a heuristic for finding the work you love. If you subject yourself to that constraint, it will automatically push you away from things you think you’re supposed to work on, toward things you actually like. “Always produce” will discover your life’s work the way water, with the aid of gravity, finds the hole in your roof.

Experience different things and figure out what you love. Not several items at a time because you will not give yourself enough time to figure out what you like about it, but one thing at a time and giving it a go.