We are all going to die one day

Neera

The biggest irony of human understanding is that we know that we are going to die one day but don’t accept it.

The truth doesn’t sink in.

We live as if death is something that happens to others while we will continue to live for a foreseeable future.

We never talk about death. Especially our own. It is a taboo subject. Not only we don’t talk about it, but we also don’t even think about it. Like a scared kitten, we close our eyes to the only certainty of our lives.

Yet we are all going to die one day.

It is not a matter of doom and gloom but a realization that our time here is limited.

If we continue to waste it, we will never be able to do what we want so much to do.

Do whatever you wanted to do, now. If you sit around and wait for the right time, it might never come.

Feel the urgency. Now or never.

If you don’t know what you want to do, find out.

You are sent here as a human being with far more intelligence than any other species. Don’t just be content with earning a living and raising children. Even animals do that. Make your life count.

Figure out what you can do to make his world a better place than how you found it whether by planting trees, cleaning streets, writing books, feeding the hungry, protecting endangered animals or any cause worthy of your attention.

If you need a constant reminder of the inevitability of death, read obituaries.

Obituaries aren’t about death; they are about the life of the person. “The sum of every obituary is how heroic people are, and how noble,” writes artist Maria Kalyan.

Reading about people who are dead and did things with their lives makes you want to get up and do something with yours.

Steve Jobs said,

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fears of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked.”

Has Steve Jobs’s statement made you stop and think? Have you found a way to leave the world a bit better than how you found it? Want to share here to inspire others?

Drop me a line in the comments section below.

Photo by Wei Ding on Unsplash

Show Your Work

Neera

In ‘good old days’ it was up to the employer to find employees. He would put an ad in the papers for the kind of person and skills he needed for the job.

It is not the case in the new age.

Now it is up to the employees to make himself findable whether it is through LinkedIn or a blog or network of connections.

It is more true if you are an artist or a creative person. You need to build a name for yourself so that you could be “found” for an assignment or a gig.

A writer needs to have a portfolio of her work already out there if she wants to publish her new book. A singer needs to have recorded (armature or semi-professional) and shared his songs on YouTube. A painter, a photographer, an illustrator, all need to exhibit their work online in order to get assignments.  

All creative people need to build ‘sharing.’ into their routine while they are focusing on getting good at whatever they do.

Rather than working in silence and hoarding their work, the new age creatives need to open up about their learning processes and consistently share what they’re working on.

By generously sharing their ideas and their knowledge, they will often gain an audience.

Imagine if your boss didn’t have to read your resume because she is already reading your blog.

Imagine being a student and getting our first gig based on a school project you posted online.

Imagine losing your job but having a social network of people familiar with your work ready to help you find a new one.

Imagine turning a side project or a hobby into your profession because you had a following that could support you.

Or imagine something simpler and just as satisfying: spending the majority of your time, energy and attention practicing a craft, learning a trade, or running a business, while also allowing for the possibility that your work might attract a group of people who share your interests.

All you have to do is show your work.

P.S. This post is inspired by Austin Kleon’s book “Show Your Work.”

Patagonia – Torres Del Paine

Neera

When the Mughal Emperor Jahangir visited Kashmir, he famously said, “If there is a heaven on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here.” I can say the same for Torres Del Paine National Park. Words cannot describe the majesty and beauty of Patagonia. It’s vivid colors and tranquility are hard to forget.

The tour bus picked us up at seven-thirty from Hotel Costaustralis. The drive to Torres Del Paine was pretty much straight. The sky was slightly overcast, and our guide was hopeful that it would clear up by the time we reach the first scenic location.

Torres Del Paine is one of the largest and most visited National Park in Chile. Most of the adventure-seeking tourists come here to trek. They do the famous W circuit (named on the shape of the trek), prefer to camp or stay in one of the resorts within the park.

As we drove for about ten minutes, the tour guide pointed to a rare occurrence. A couple of cowboys on horseback armed with shepherd dogs were taking their herds for grazing. “This is a rare occurrence,” the guide commented, “There aren’t many cattle stations left in Patagonia.”

About forty minutes later, we were asked to look on the left and wait for the most breathtaking view. A crystal blue lake against the snow-capped peaks appeared out of nowhere. A collective sigh was followed by camera clicks. We stepped out to view the Sarmiento Lake and were greeted by the Patagonian winds.

Sarmiento Lake is 90 square kilometers and is the biggest lake in the sanctuary. Unlike other lakes in the park owe their origin the glaciers this is formed from rain, which gives it a deep blue color. But what was more interesting was its white shores. Its shores are marked by extensive “Thrombolites,” live calcium carbonate structures lined by cyanobacteria (blue-green algae), which began to form with the last ice age about 10,000 years ago. They are, in a way, living fossils. They grow at a rate of less than 1 millimeter per year.

Another remarkable thing (visible in the lake picture) are three distinctive granite peaks known as The Towers of Paine. They are about 3000 meters high peaks deeply eroded by glaciers. In her book published in 1880, Lady Florence Dixie gave named these three towers as Cleopatra’s Needles. 

We were soon surrounded by Guanacos, camel-like animals native to South America, closely related to the llama. Its name comes from the Quechua word huanaco and is pronounced as wanaku. Young guanacos are called chulengos. These are placid animals. Though they were in their wild habitat, we were allowed to take photos with them, provided we didn’t go too close and leave them alone.

Our next stop was a waterfall. To get to it, we walked for twenty minutes through millions of years old rocks, experiencing the true force of the Patagonian wind. It was literally flying us off our feet. It blows with such a ferocity that it can, in Chatwin’s expression – ‘strip the man raw.’ A legend is that it actually made Antoine de Saint-Exupery‘s plane fly backward.

We made frequent stops before lunch to see flora and fauna and spot the puma. The Patagonia land is lined by the basalt pebbles left behind by glaciers. Despite its harsh climate, Patagonian soil is very fertile. We came across several well-rounded bushes with stunning flowers. Another notable flora is the shunted trees that covered a lot of areas. Looking like bonsai, they grow extremely slowly and reach maturity only after approximately 200 years.

We didn’t spot any puma though our guide said he had seen them five or six times. There is also a rare deer called Huemul. Birdlife is abundant, with over 115 species recorded, including the Andean condor with its wingspan of up to 3.2 meters, although we didn’t see any.

Wild winds mean there is a big risk of fires, and Patagonia has experienced quite a few in the past few years. In 2011, two fires in February and another in December, both started by tourists’ neglect, have resulted in more than 16,000 hectares of the Torres del Paine being destroyed, resulting in permanent environmental damage.

After lunch, we went to another lake, Lake Grey, which had stunning turquoise ice masses floating through it. The lake is formed by the Grey Glacier.

After tasting some ice, we packed in the tour bus towards the last stop of the day. Before I tell you about that, I have a story to share, which Bruce Chatwin wrote in the open chapter of his book In Patagonia.

In my grandmother’s dining-room there was a glass-fronted cabinet, and in the cabinet a piece of skin. It was a small piece only , but thick and leathery, with strands of coarse reddish hair. It was stuck to a card with a rusty pin. On the cars was some writing in faded black ink, but I was too young then to read.”

‘What is that?’

‘A piece of a brontosaurus.’

“My mother knew the names of two prehistoric animals, the brontosaurus and the mammoth. She knew it was not a mammoth. Mammoths came from Siberia.”

The brontosaurus, I learned, was an animal that had drowned in the Flood, being too big for Noah to ship aboard the Ark. I pictured a shaggy lumbering creature with claws and fangs and a malicious green light in its eyes. Sometimes the brontosaurus would crash through the bedroom wall and wake me from my sleep.

This particular brontosaurus had lived in Patagonia, a country in South America, at the far end of the world. Thousands of years before, it had fallen into a glacier, in perfect condition at the bottom. Here my grandmother’s cousin Charley Milward the Sailor found it.

[…]

Never in my life have I wanted anything as I wanted that piece of skin. My grandmother said I should have it one day, perhaps. And when she died I said: Now I can have that piece of brontosaurus but my mother said: “Oh, that thing! I’m afraid we threw it away.”

Bruce Chatwin was ridiculed in the school by his teacher for telling the story because brontosauruses are reptiles. It was not until later he found out that the skin belonged to a mylodon or Giant Sloth, and his uncle Charley Milward didn’t find the whole skeleton but some skin and bones preserved by the cold dryness and salt, in a cave in The Cave of Hope, in Chilean Patagonia. But this story itched a deep desire in Chatwin’s heart to visit Patagonia. He visited Patagonia and wrote several books on it, which introduced Patagonia to the rest of the world.

They now have a life-size statue of Sloth outside the cave. The remains that Bruce Chatwin’s great-uncle, Charley Milward, found are proudly displayed in the British Museum.

Three books rule

Neera

In his famous book the 4-Hour Work Week, Tim Ferris shares this theory that if you read 3 books on a topic from different authors, you’ll become more knowledgeable about it than 99% of people you know.

It’s a bold claim but it makes sense.

Tim’s not saying you’ll become an expert surgeon by reading 3 books on surgery. But you will gain more theoretical knowledge of surgery than most people (other than professional surgeons of course).

Sia Mohajer explains this concept very well in his post Three Book Rule to Become an Expert.

Three books rule might be the permission slip you were looking for to learn a new skill, to start a new career or to simply gain new knowledge.

The bottom line of the rule is that most people’s knowledge about any topic is very limited. If you have read three books (by different authors to cover more ground and to get different points of view), and have understood and internalized that knowledge, you already know more than 99% of people. In their eyes, you are an expert.

Patagonia – The end of the world

Neera

When I traveled to Patagonia in November 2017, I knew nothing about the place. None of my friends had been there, and I had not read any books on it.

Normally when I visit a place, I like to read some books on it – not the lonely planet kind of books – but the books that use the country or the region as a setting in a novel or a memoir. So when I get there, I have a bit of understanding of the culture and history of the place to appreciate it more. In the case of Patagonia, I didn’t have a clue. I read Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia and Julius Beerbohm’s Wanderings in Patagonia after witnessing the amazing land.

Looking at the well-developed roads, contemporary towns, and herds of tourists, it is hard to imagine that this place was untouched just one and a half-century ago. It is not certain when Patagonia was discovered.

“Some say it was Americo Vespucio during his expedition in the year 1502. However, the man who first spotted the inhabitants in this land, the Patagones, was Ferdinand Magellanin 1520. Elcano, the only survivor from that expedition returned to Patagonia in 1525.” The First Explorers

Patagonia is a vast expense of land comprising of the whole of Southern end of South America. Extending for more than a million square kilometers, it spreads across both Chile and Argentina. It is surrounded by three oceans – the Pacific Ocean to the west, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Southern Ocean to the south.

So unaware my husband and I were of Patagonia’s significance that we didn’t even book anything beforehand. Unaware of the fact that during peak season (between October and April), everything gets booked out twelve months in advance.

We wasted a whole day in Puerto Montt, where we booked tours and accommodation with a local travel agent (read the story in at Lake District – Chile and Argentina).

On route to Punta Arena bus stop. 

Punta Arena

We took an overnight flight from Puerto Montt and arrived at Punta Arenas at four in the morning. We had to wait at the airport for another two hours for someone (arranged by the travel agent) to pick us up and drop us at the bus station. The bus station was a basic shed where we waited for another forty minutes for the bus to arrive. Also waiting for the bus under the shed were two English brothers, who were going to trek the famous ‘W’ circuit of Patagonia. I lamented that I couldn’t do such a treacherous trek but managed to impress them by sharing that I hiked Machu Picchu. That was my boasting for the day.

Punta Arena, previously also known as Sandy Point, is the capital of Chile’s southernmost region. It is the largest but sparsely populated, with just 100,000 inhabitants. Its significance lies in Chile’s claim to Antarctica and is often a base for Antarctic expeditions.

For Tourists, it has only one attraction. Museo Nao Victoria. A museum with a full-size replica of the first ship ever to circumnavigate the world Ferdinand Magellan’s Nao Victoria. Since October 2011, the museum has also added a full-size replica of the James Caird, used by Ernest Shackleton during his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition with the Endurance. (Wikipedia).

A view on-route from Punta Arena to Puerto Natales on the bus.

Puerto Natales

We reached Puerto Natales around nine in the morning and were lucky to get an early check-in. Our room in Hotel Costaustralis overlooked the Pacific Ocean and Patagonian Andes. It was big and comfortable with the sun pouring right in. The hotel itself had exquisite chateau-style architecture and must have been very famous with travelers who liked to travel in style for about four decades ago.

The view from the hotel window.

We had just four and a half days in Puerto Natales. The next three days were fully booked with tours. The first and last day was free. We decided to use our first day to explore Puerto Natales.

Puerto Natales is 247 km northwest of Punta Arenas and is the gateway to the Torres del Paine, one of Chile’s most popular national parks. It has a mere 20,000 population that swells during the tourist season, which is from October to April when there are more sunny days, less rain, and 16 hours of daylight.

Our first walk from the hotel to the city center was in search of a breakfast place. We were directed to a trendy street where there were heavily priced tiny cafes with a seating capacity of no more than 10 to 20. We picked one and ordered a hefty breakfast because we had not eaten for a long time. The food was delicious, the ambiance was perfect, but the bill was out of this world.

Build around the main square, as most Spanish towns are, Puerto Natales had a fair few restaurants, a church, sovereign shops, a supermarket, and several tiny art galleries. The art galleries were, in fact, souvenir shops. We went in to check out Arte Indio, a very enticing gallery that had a huge array of unusual souvenirs. They were out of our pocket. Instead of buying But photography was free.

At that point originated my love affair of photographing souvenirs. Instead of buying them, lugging them all through the trip, finding a place to display them at home, and then soon after throwing them in charity bins because you get sick of dusting them, photographing them was a much better option.

Later, at a corner, we found several handicraft shops. I did the same thing. I took a lot of photographs. Their display was focused on earlier inhabitants of Puerto Natales.

On the walk back to the hotel, we came across a wall covered in a mural depicting the life of earlier inhabitants of Patagonia.

They were called Tehuelches Indians. They were well built, much taller than European men ( 9-11 feet tall), and could run faster than horses. They were known to hunt ostriches and guanacos (a camel-like animal native to South America, closely related to the llama). They used a special tool called bolas, which are spherical stone balls that wrap around the bird’s neck and kills it.

George Chaworth Musters, a British sailor, explorer, and writer, visited Patagonia in 1870 and spent a considerable amount of time with the Tehuelches Indians. In 1873, Musters published a book about his adventures. It is called At Home with the Patagonian. He wrote, “…dressed in cloaks of skins and shoes of guanaco hide, which made huge footmarks, whence they were called Patagonés, or “large feet,” by the Spaniards; and thus originated in a nickname the name of the country, Patagonia.”

Archeological findings reveal that Patagonia and the Tierra del Fuego were inhabited by native peoples as far back as 4,500 years ago. These native tribes are commonly referred to as ‘Tehuelche tribes’ or ‘Fuegians’ but actually refer to a number of separate groups with their own unique dialects and traditions. Here, these nomadic people roamed desolate landscapes and endured the tough climate while hunting wildlife and marine life for survival.

While some native tribes of Patagonia were largely land-based, others relied on canoes to traverse the labyrinth of channels and waterways around the Tierra del Fuego. Charles Darwin reported seeing such people in his travels and noted that many wore little to no clothing, even in the snow. Instead, they stayed warm by covering themselves in fats and oils from fish and other animals to protect themselves from biting temperatures and winds. Additionally, they often lit a fire in the back of their canoes to keep warm while traveling over chilly waters. These reports are what led to the Tierra del Fuego, ‘Land of Fire.’

Despite the harsh conditions in which they lived and the bad treatment they received by the Europeans, Tehuelches were gentle people. Julius Beerbohm wrote in Wanderings in Patagonia:

They are good-natured, hospitable, and affectionate; their instincts are gentle; violence and ferocity are foreign to their nature, and though not invariable veracious nor strictly honest, if they think you trust them, they will take care not to deceive you. – The indigenous people from Patagonia, South America

We spotted a small cluster of handicraft shops that had big cardboard figures of Tehuelches people.

Apart from Murals, Puerto Natales had many public arts displayed along the coastline and the town.

Even the rubbish bins were artistic.

We came back to our hotel for a sumptuous three-course dinner. It was one of the best salmon I had ever eaten.

We went to bed early in anticipation of our next day’s trip to Torres del Paine. 

This article is part four of the series of articles I wrote about my travel to Chile, Argentina, and Peru with my husband in November 2018. 

The next post is on Patagonia — Torres Del Paine.

It Worked!

Neera

Hi All,

The post I sent earlier was from my mobile phone. It was an experiment.

In a few days I am travelling to United Kingdom and was wondering how will I continue to write a post a day if I can’t write one from home.

From there came the idea of writing the post from my phone. I downloaded the free WordPress app, hand wrote a note and off it went.

To hand write the note was even more creative idea than writing the post using phone app. Not entirely original yet very creative.

I have long been inspired by Debbie Millman who has handwritten her book “Look Both Ways.”

If a book can be handwritten, so can be a blogpost.

Besides, handwritten post is more personal, just like a handwritten letter.

And I am finding that typing a post from mobile phone is less intimidating than typing it from my computer.

What do you think of this little experiment of mine? Is it worth continuing or should I abandon it right here before it gets absurd? Drop me a line to let me know either way.

The feature image at the start of the post is also a book by Debbie Millman.