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
Monday, November 21, 2022
 

"How good it is when you have roast meat or suchlike foods before you, to impress on your mind that this is the dead body of a fish, this is the dead body of a bird or pig; and again, that the Falernian wine is the mere juice of grapes, and your purple edged robe simply the hair of a sheep soaked in shell-fish blood!

And in sexual intercourse that it is no more than the friction of a membrane and a spurt of mucus ejected.

How good these perceptions are at getting to the heart of the real thing and penetrating through it, so you can see it for what it is!

This should be your practice throughout all your life: when things have such a plausible appearance, show them naked, see their shoddiness, strip away their own boastful account of themselves.

Vanity is the greatest seducer of reason: when you are most convinced that your work is important, that is when you are most under its spell."

~ Marcus Aurelius

------------------------------------------------

I don’t really know how to take this piece of advice. On the one hand, I agree. I agree that looking at things in their stark nakedness can help us confront the truth behind them, no matter how uncomfortable or ugly. But on the other hand, the truth can sometimes lie in the pretence itself or in its symbolism, rather than in the material substance. That is why we have such a thing as rituals I would think. The death of a person could be seen as simply the expiry of a body but it is certainly much more than that…? Which is why we have funerals to commemorate the “much more”. Even marriages for that matter celebrate much more than the meeting of bodies. I’m not sure if stripping away the appearances or symbolisms in these cases helps us get to the truth because in a way these appearances construct the truth rather than hide them. Though I suppose it’s easy to get carried away by the appearances of things and make more of them than they really are. Perhaps that is what Aurelius asks us to guard against.


posted by Sylvia D'souza at 2:48 am 0 comments
Thursday, November 10, 2022
 

I tend to think about the similarities and differences in cultures quite a bit, as my dear readers should know by now. It was always of interest to me even before I entered academia and I guess it is not a mere coincidence that that is a very integral part of or maybe the thread that runs across all my research now. Recently someone asked me if I have noticed any specific features of cultures on my visit to Dubai but I never really felt like I experienced a Dubai ‘culture’ so to speak. As in I don’t think I had an opportunity to insert myself into a way of life there, for one, and for two, because of the large migrant population, I mostly felt like I was interacting with other Indians, say when I was out shopping or something. But one of these interactions sort of surfaced to my mind when I was thinking about this. This happened in the local church where too I mostly saw Indians or South East Asians. There was something like a fair put up for Mother Mary’s feast. You had to first buy coupons to get whatever you want at the fair. While the rest of my family decided to go for some errand, I felt like having tea. The lady at the coupons told me the tea was one dirham so I got coupons worth two dirhams, for me and my mom. When I went to the actual stall, it turned out that the tea was two dirhams. I told him I had only coupons worth two dirhams but wanted two teas. Maybe I could pay cash for one tea? The chap said there was no need for the additional coupons or for cash and he would give me two teas regardless. This warmed my heart so much! I mean, two dirhams is not much in the scheme of things but it wasn’t about the money for me but this human gesture, that this person went beyond the material exchange to do something purely out of goodness made me feel good. Maybe it reminds me that there are people in the world who are not all about the transactional stuff or about following rules religiously, that human connection means something, that it’s power is still alive… and I like to be reminded of that.


posted by Sylvia D'souza at 7:18 pm 0 comments
Friday, November 04, 2022
 

I complain too much

Or maybe I just

Seek for the rightness of things

Not satisfied

With what the general lot

Accept and go

Happily or sadly

Drifting by

I contest and complain

I keep asking

Why

Because you listen

Not everyone does

Don't I know

Which makes you, you

And there is none

Not a single soul

Quite like you

But I fear

How precious you are

So rarely comes to my lips

That you will never know

Because I only speak

In quarrelling tones

Telling of what

You could do more

And so I fear if

All this noise

Drowns out the sound

Of the real thing

It can't though?

Because real things

Are felt, not heard

And I do hope

You will feel

In spite of all the din

Of my general laments

 

~Me


posted by Sylvia D'souza at 6:16 pm 0 comments
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