For the past many years I had grown used to relative stability. The fact that nothing very dramatic happened to pull the carpet under my feet gave me the illusion that I was in a fair bit of control of my life. Obviously there are many things I haven't been able to accomplish in spite of wanting to or wishing to—that is natural for any human—but I mean a general control in that you know what you will be doing next month or next year and you don't see any reason why things shouldn't go according to plan.

The pandemic and a lot of uncertainty that has come with the pandemic where earlier assurances don't hold anymore have made me realise just how precarious and unstable the conditions of life really are. It has made me realise that I have only been lucky the past many years to not have encountered any dramatic or life changing event. In that sense, nothing really was or is in my control. I am only in control to the extent that the conditions are stable or unchanging but anything can happen any moment to change them. This realisation makes me feel as if I haven't appreciated just how fortunate I have been in some ways. Yes, your intelligence, strategies, plans, determination, hard work all count... but they can be turned into dust in the blink of an eye. 

I guess there is nothing we can do about the things we can't control but this profound sense of how insignificant our efforts can be rendered by the universe brings with it humility and gratitude. If I or anyone achieves or does not achieve something it is also to a great extent because it was made (im)possible by conditions that we neither could control nor effect in our favour/disfavour.

I wanted to say something on my birthday as I usually do but nothing sums up my nostalgic mood quite so well as this poem… not in relation to any person but in general… strangely I remember writing a verse with the same key line ‘I/We have been here before’ but I don’t remember reading this poem before…

Sudden Light 

By Dante Gabriel Rossetti 

I have been here before,

But when or how I cannot tell:

I know the grass beyond the door,

The sweet keen smell,

The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

You have been mine before,—

How long ago I may not know:

But just when at that swallow's soar

Your neck turn'd so,

Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore.

Has this been thus before?

And shall not thus time's eddying flight

Still with our lives our love restore

In death's despite,

And day and night yield one delight once more?

Excerpts from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

[1]

“No,” said the little prince. “I am looking for friends. What does that mean– ‘tame’?”

“It is an act too often neglected,” said the fox. It means to establish ties.”

“ ‘To establish ties’?”

“Just that,” said the fox. “To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world...”

“I am beginning to understand,” said the little prince. “There is a flower...I think that she has tamed me...”

[2]

 “But he came back to his idea.

“My life is very monotonous,” the fox said. “I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow.

And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the colour of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat...”

The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time. “Please– tame me!” he said.”

…………………………………………….

A friend gave me this book and it is one of those rare things, simple and profound at the same time. This particular excerpt for instance. I would never have thought of the word ‘tame’ in this way but if you think about it when you develop a ‘bond’ with someone it is as if you become ‘tame’, ‘helpless’, ‘powerless’… they have power over you and you are tame at their hands, and maybe the tamed also have power over their captor because just as you believe you are tame, they might believe they are tame when it comes to you! They are no longer one among many to you and you are no longer one among many to them. There is pleasure in being tamed as there is pleasure in the sensation of life that it creates in you… the light that it lights up in you… where otherwise there would be a dull dark space.   

You know when you have one of those days when the universe doesn't seem to be just telling you something but shaking you violently and making you listen? Well, today was one of those days.

In the first instance I realised that I had put myself into a position—yes, I myself had put myself into this position, unknowingly of course—where any random person who was neither my better nor even equal nor whom I was paid to report to could boss me around! I have an utter dislike of being bossed around (which is ironic because some could say I tend to boss around, but that's beside the point here) and even my bosses, thank God for them, have never bossed me around. I realised random people were now in a position to think they could boss me around and I couldn't do a thing about it. The fact that the person is not someone I should even give the time of the day to normally should be able to do this made me bristle.

In the second instance something of the same kind happened. Something even my boss wouldn't do in a million years a random person was able to inflict on me, and what is more, I had to bear this imposition calmly. The fact that apart from not being my boss or better what they did was in itself extremely unfair and based on an evaluation that was contradictory to everything I had stood for till that moment, was a double shock. And to think that I had in a way transferred power to them who could not only inflict such decisions or actions on me in cold blood but whose decisions or actions could affect me to this degree made me bristle again.

I decided not to act spontaneously or impulsively even though I was bristling to the tips of my fingers apart from the fact that I hadn’t recovered fully from the shock. I decided to do what I always do—make a plan. The one thing that I cannot allow is for random people to think they can boss me around, and the second thing is, I cannot allow random people to disturb my emotional equilibrium. They have not earned it. So yes, the universe is telling me something. I am listening.

I have alluded to this humour group on FB that I am "admining" these days. It's leading me to reflect quite a bit on humour, tastes, audience perception and response, and more stuff like that.

I was trying to boil this whole "What is humour?" question down to an analytical rule, as I tend to do. Not everyone finds the same thing equally funny or even funny; not just that, what I find offensive might be funny to someone else, what someone finds funny might just be "cute" but not funny to me. Humour seems to be as complex a thing to pin down as any other aspect of human emotion or experience.

Which made me approach this question from my own perspective, as that's the only perspective I can analyse from the inside so to speak. I cannot speak for what is humour in general or what people find humourous but I should have a clue as to what I consider humour and why I find one thing funny and another thing not so much. The fact that I am largely internally coherent and consistent as a person and not random or unpredictable in matters of taste perhaps makes me a good subject ;)

So this is what I came up with: 1. Something needs to speak to my mind or make me think for me to find it funny; the more it speaks to my mind (say sarcasm, irony, word play, etc.) the more I will find it funny. 2. Something needs to speak to my heart for me to find it cute/sweet but not funny (certain cat photos/videos for example). I'll smile weakly but not laugh at this sort of stuff. 3. Something that has no mind in it I will find stupid and not funny. This is the opposite of number 1 (example may be someone falling on banana skin). 4. Something that has no heart in at all I will find vulgar/offensive. This is the opposite of number 2 (example might be making a joke at the expense of a disabled person). 5. There are some varieties of humour that combine 1 and 2, that is, head and heart in good measure. These top my list. 6. There are some varieties of pathetic attempts at humour that combine 3 and 4, that is, they are stupid as well as offensive. These are at the bottom of my list.

Interesting, isn’t it?!

A good friend made this remark in a conversation about a rather insignificant but trying situation saying that she was surprised I had lasted so long. Not only had I lasted long I did not intend to quit. That made me think. Looking back at my life I have to say that "lasting" or "staying power" is one of the things that have defined its trajectory. And funnily, I owe the best things and the worst things in my life to the same staying power. I think the best are mostly professionally related and worst are relationships related. Professionally this staying power or single-minded determination or perseverance or standing against the odds has borne immense fruit ultimately. If nothing else it led to personal growth and learning that I could deploy eventually. It also sort of made me more oriented to staying strong while the winds blow hard because I knew it would pass... and I learnt that the first rule of winning is showing up or put in my way, staying or sticking around. Unfortunately when it comes to people and relationships I feel this logic doesn't work because they are not necessarily build around the same principles of integrity and long-term view that I operate with... It seems to me that in this domain it's perhaps best to cut your losses sooner than later though it's not my natural way so I am at a grave disadvantage.

I had an interesting thought putting the staying power and the winning focus ideas together...seeing as 2021 is a year where I do hope to make some important wins if I stay the hard course. I have no idea why but this thought actually occurred to me in something of a dream or half-sleep state. It’s to do with the fairy-tale of Cinderella (I might not have the details of this story right but they are irrelevant to my point). Cinderella’s win in the end is attached to the missing slipper. However, the slipper is not one that will fit anyone else but her no matter how many try it on and try to sabotage her place. It is something that is no use for anyone else because it can only fit her and her alone. So Cinderella doesn't really need to fear because the slipper awaits her and is meant for her...and is only contingent on her finding a path to it. There is no competition but only a test… a test that demands her to fulfil her destiny. It might take all her strength and staying power to reach it and there might be people who are deluded enough to try to snatch the slipper on the way… but they cannot really take what is rightfully hers. It can only fit her.

Enough of stories for now ;) Let me wish my dear, wonderful, kind, "staying" readers a very Happy New Year… with this apt line from Cinderella, “Be kind, have courage and always believe in a little magic.”