To Be or Not To Be

A little kingdom I possess,
Where thoughts and feelings dwell;
And very hard the task I find
Of governing it well.
~ Louisa May Alcott

...that more or less describes my situation!

~A Wise Man Said~

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
~ Aristotle
Friday, November 29, 2019
 
I have been super, super busy (as you can no doubt tell!)… and will be continue to be so for the next two weeks… my faithful readers would know that December is the time I go home… and yes, I am going home this time too! …but it means I have a ton of work to wrap up…so speeding to the finish is a priority for now…

Wrote the following a few weeks ago and forgot to post…maybe just as well! :)


I needed advice on a certain minor decision recently. I asked someone I look up to for it and they expressed confidence in my own ability to make the right decision. The problem was that I just didn’t know what the right decision was. I decided then to take one step which wouldn’t exactly materialise the event but it would set the balling rolling in a way that the decision would be taken out of my hands and would move into the field of ‘chance’. The other party could accept or reject at the next stage so it wouldn’t anymore be my decision so all I had done was to put the event within the domain of possibility, so to speak. Had I not take that one step it wouldn’t have moved into the field of possibility at all so it would in effect have been my decision to not make the event come about, but this way, I thought, I was simply giving both negative and positive possibilities an equal chance.

It seemed to me that by taking this approach I had essentially made the decision to trust God. If I hadn’t taken the step, it would be my decision to not let the event materialise. If I take the step, I am certainly giving the event a chance to materialise but only a chance because there are also many variables involved in this event materialising in my favour so if it did materialise or didn’t, it would no longer be my decision but God’s way of telling me that it was the right decision whatever it was. Rationalising in this way, I felt not only good about how I had handled the matter, I also felt that it allowed me to have a certain sense of detachment for the outcome. Had I consciously decided in favour of the event without it being in my complete control to bring it about and then had it not occurred because of some or the other variable going wrong, I would have been dejected. I would have felt that I wanted something and made an effort for it, and it didn’t happen. Whereas, in this scheme of things, I could tell myself that I am neutral to the outcome, and the outcome itself would determine my choice rather than my choice taking me toward an unpredictable outcome… essentially, whatever the outcome, it would be the one that I would think was good for me.

It seems to me that a lot of people perhaps go about decision-making in their lives in this way. The general rule being that whatever happens, happens for the best. If things work out, they were meant to, if they don’t, they weren’t. I think it allows one to become more Zen-like in one’s response to events where instead of feeling disappointed or miserable one simply feels that this might be for the best. You take every event or its materialisation/non-materialisation not as an event that you brought about or didn’t (and perhaps your detachedness in the process is key to seeing it this way) but as something that by its very materialisation or lack of it tells you whether it is good one way or the other…and whichever it is, is for the best.

Moving to the present, the event did materialise. I wonder if my relaxed attitude to the outcome and through the process actually helped bring it about… which would be paradoxical to say the least!

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 11:01 pm 0 comments
Sunday, November 17, 2019
 
I sometimes wonder if I think too much of myself especially since I appreciate humility as a virtue. I swing like a pendulum from thinking no end of myself to thinking very little, and in between I ask myself why I have to be one extreme or the other. I could very well be so-so or the cringe worthy ‘average’. Why should I be excellent or nothing? The trouble with thinking in such extremes is that you take every situation and every person as some sort of a test for where you stand. If you perform excellently one day and get a pat on the back, you swing one way, and if someone seems to look past you on the street (maybe they didn’t even notice you), you might swing the other. Your control or hold on your own sense of self is very precarious because it is not located within your own self but rather on the outside in the perceived validations and negations.  

While I often speak about my favourite virtues, the one vice I have and have had since childhood is jealousy. I think that no vice is so bad if one has awareness of it and in that sense perhaps there is no vice as bad as a lack of self-awareness because if you are not self-aware chances are you don’t even recognise your own vices and therefore cannot reflect about them, much less correct them or at least control them. It seems to me that my propensity for jealousy might be related to a desire for validation from the external world and a feeling that if this validation doesn’t come from those whose validation is highly esteemed then it means you swing the other way, you are not good enough, or even worse, you are ‘average’. This vice can be destructive if one focuses on comparison and competition with those who do get the validation because then instead of working toward becoming more worthy of validation one focuses on becoming better than another person(s) which I would assume is detrimental to achieving the objective of self-improvement which requires a positive focus… whereas this same vice through self-awareness could also be positively transformative if instead of focusing on comparison and competition, one works toward self-improvement and becoming worthy of the validation of one who is highly esteemed. But what would be even better is if one detaches oneself from desire for validation from an external entity and focuses on desire for self-improvement for its own sake (and not for the sake of external validation). Instead of viewing people as competition and contesting for the same validation one could view them all as on their own journey which could be more or less successful than yours but which nevertheless does not have a bearing on your own unique journey of self-making or self-improvement or self-fulfilment or whatever that might be (I realise that I am increasingly using academic jargon on my blog—is that a good thing or bad, dear readers?).

I guess what I’m saying is that the only validation worth seeking comes from within and not from outside albeit if one is self-aware and reflective…and if others receive it more than you do even from ones whom you esteem, it should not cause any jealousy or negative emotion because you are secure in your own validation. Your sense of self is not precariously perched on the fragile branch of arbitrary evaluation and whimsical appreciation.

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 7:15 pm 0 comments
Thursday, November 14, 2019
 
Sincerity
 

No longer do we set store
By sincerity
To mean
What we say
To say
What we mean
To say it like it is
Is not common
Anymore
 
I would rather
Be honestly critiqued
Than showered
With insincere praise
Or even be
Dealt harsh blows
Genuinely meant
Or reserved for me
Than be flattered
Or coddled
With sweet words
And soft sentiments
That don't go deep
Below the surface
Nor meant justly
for me 
 
Hand me truth
Most bitter
Any day
Than sweetness
Most false
I could live with
Bitter truth
As with vile medicine
Which does good
Eventually
But never
Sweet lies
 
~Me

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 11:37 pm 0 comments
Sunday, November 10, 2019
 
I sometimes feel the weariness of life a little too heavily. Most times one goes about one’s activities casually or determinedly never really thinking or pausing to think about the larger purpose, about where all this is leading to, about where we are all headed, about what tomorrow may be expected to bring and how I would expect to cope… but sometimes…sometimes you take a pause albeit to rest but the mind wanders to these sorts of questions and then you realise why it’s easier to be busy or to do something, anything… as long as you are doing something or involved in something or feeling like you are being productive in some way, life passes, it goes on…one activity to the next, one goal to the next, you move along… but pausing and thinking can be dangerous… it can take the joy out of the activity too because now you’re doing it with full awareness of how meaningless it is… you have to put extra effort to numb the awareness or to trick yourself into believing in meaning, in a larger purpose, in a design… and you serving some purpose in this grand design…you have to hold onto that thought somehow… the more you believe in it the more you are able to invest in your activity-filled life with some semblance of passion… and that is perhaps for the best… because what would be the alternative?

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 4:38 am 0 comments
Monday, November 04, 2019
 
The oven in our shared home had a problem. The person who came to fix it moved the oven a bit to figure out what’s wrong and it turned out that it was actually sitting on the wire which is how the wire must have cracked. He told me that he would bring a new oven to replace this one. My spontaneous reaction no doubt ingrained in me over the years in my experience of how such issues are usually dealt with in India was to ask if the wire couldn’t be replaced. I am not usually curious about electric, electronic, technological matters and I am painfully aware of my lack of knowledge in this area but I must have been really surprised that this small problem must mean such a huge deal that I couldn’t stop myself from asking. His answer was something like “oh yes, I can. Let me get a new wire!” I was flabbergasted! I mean, I couldn’t really fathom that it was actually possible to fix the wire and the chap thought of replacing the entire oven instead!

This got me thinking about the cultural difference. In India we make do with resources or fix them till they can be fixed no more. If the soles of our shoes break off, we get them mended; if the wires in the umbrella get bent out of shape, we get them repaired; if the blades in the grinders stop moving, we get them new blades (incidentally my grinder developed this problem and my mom has taken it back to India to get it fixed)… but here one would throw away the shoe, the umbrella, the grinder and buy new ones. It makes sense too because you’d probably pay more to fix these items here (unless one is an electrician like the oven guy) than to replace them. And one is so used to this ‘replacement’ mind-set that even in a situation where fixing is a viable option one does not think of it (like the oven guy) whereas the fixing option comes to mind first to me because that’s the option we always go for when something breaks down back home… getting a new one is the last option and only explored after every other option has been exhausted.

This brings me to another incident that happened today. I had bought a brand new jacket with a zip broken because it was on a discount and because it also had buttons. I assumed I’d be able to wear it well with the buttons and might get my mom to help me fix it when I see her in December but the buttons didn’t really work as planned. The jacket was a bit too snug ;) …and the buttons would pop open which is not much help in the winter. So I took it to a cobbler’s shop where they said they couldn’t fix it but pointed me to a place where they mended clothes. I was pretty happy to know such a place even existed because so far I had never come across any ‘mending’ options. I went there, showed my jacket, and the zipper that had come off… the response was that I would need to replace the entire zipping paraphernalia from the jacket which apparently would cost me more than the jacket itself! I asked her if she couldn’t try fastening the zipper into its place in the jacket. Her answer was an emphatic ‘no’ at first but when I said I couldn’t afford to pay more than the jacket to fix it she said she’ll see what she could do. She then used some of her implements to get the zipper locked into place in the jacket and it worked… just like that, in 5 minutes. She didn’t charge me anything though I kept insisting (extremely kind of her I thought!). Again the first option and presumably also the last that she came up with was to replace the entire equipment rather than to see if she could fix the zipper!

Makes me wonder about the culture of ‘use and throw’ that we as a society are moving toward. Not just here but also in India where the more affluent or upper middle class are concerned… instead of using creative ways to fix things we now simply go for something new… the motivation to fix something is also lacking in that sense… why put effort into fixing the old when you could get a new one for cheaper… it seems to me that this makes us value things in themselves also much less… we do not see them as long-term durable assets that need to be cared for and maintained but as short-term replaceable goods …ready to be thrown at the first sign of a defect… it’s not difficult to see how this attitude may spread to other areas of life including relationships… maybe what we think of as purely economic behaviour has the power to transform our general behaviour by transforming our notion of ‘value’?

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 6:50 am 0 comments
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