For some reason it seems like I’m looking for an escape once again: a new distraction, a different place, yet another routine. A part of me pains for something that has already passed, despite knowing life is infinitely better now. A nostalgia for simplicity, I think, when I centered my goals around attaining and becoming that one person, before realising that’s only the beginning. 

There’s a loneliness in my day to day. It’s my disposition; I tend towards melancholy. Some days I’m in awe at how rich I am with the support I have and grew up with; but other nights like these, the intensity of love feels so deeply woven into my skin that I can’t shake out of it.

I fall asleep with chills, but wake up warm. I tell myself that this was for the best, but a part of me doubts if I made the right move. 

There is a beauty and cruelty in life in that we cannot turn back. As fulfilling as growth is, there are some moments in the past I remember but am no longer able to eternalise: the first feeling of abandonment at being the last to be picked up from school; the first feeling of jealousy when my sister’s headband was prettier than mine. I’ve grown to let these unpleasant feelings slide.

Walking in the same garden with the little one today, I remembered how two and a half decades ago, my mother used to walk with me in the early mornings to the bus stop. And I recall her saying, “One day, Mommy won’t accompany you anymore and you’ll have to walk alone.”

It kind of feels like this tonight. Despite knowing I’m surrounded by people all the time, for some strange reason, I feel completely alone.

God guide me, please. These days I’m troubled, and I want to escape, knowing that distance will not resolve anything; only time will. The pains of not knowing!

I've been led to disillusionment gradually, but certainly over the last few months. It's hard to recover from the loss of faith in people, the belief in something more than the mundane. I used to ascribe more to individuals; experience has taught me otherwise. I no longer wish to see beneath the surface or believe that they have more than what I see. Nurture has been painful; I'm going against my nature.

To be firm without hardening. How do I do that? I can see and understand now why my grandmother was so hard - life has hardened her - she cannot afford to break. How do I grow and protect all that I love - bending, but without breaking? Give me the courage of flexibility, but with strength. Teach me how to love with an open heart again. As I once did, as she still does today.

Marriage is hard.
Divorce is hard.
Choose your hard.

Obesity is hard.
Being fit is hard.
Choose your hard.

Being in debt is hard.
Being financially disciplined is hard.
Choose your hard.

Communication is hard.
Not communicating is hard.
Choose your hard.

Life will never be easy.
It will always be hard.
But we can choose our hard.

Pick wisely.

– Devon Brough

Today we survived 8h of being home without electricity. It taught me the importance of what matters and the small things I took for granted: natural/artificial wind and light. It’s been awhile since I made time to rest - physically I know I need it. 

We were lucky today too, the weather was cool and windy. It even rained while we were back at home. In all, things weren’t the usual. They weren’t perfect. But they made me realise the importance of small, everyday things that I’ve look past as I constantly moved ahead. Stillness has its own quiet beauty too. I’m reminded of the time back in Cambodia and how despite the heat and cramped conditions, we managed to sleep with so many of us in the village hut. 

How little we truly need. Today I prioritised charging the electric fan with the portable charger rather than my phone. Faced with a shortage, I’m confronted by what’s truly important and necessary, and the awareness of what is essential for comfort becomes all apparent. 

Had some time to ease into my body and breathe in the stretch. 

Why the sudden sadness?

How did another year slip me by?

(Shared on @booksonfringe two days ago)

It has been a year since I last posted here. A part of me wants to move forward and not look at what has passed - slowing down means confronting life in all its naked glory.

There were some terrible, tender moments this year. There were days which I travelled to the ends of earth not knowing what I was searching for. 

There were also many days of which I no longer remember. The days of fog where I would busy myself, physically expending energy on cares both material and immaterial. Those moments made the bulk of almost every day.

But there were also seconds that stretched into infinity, when I allowed the softness of my senses to immerse me: the touch of your hand, smell of your hair, length of your lashes that day. Those moments I remember; I forget; and remember again. 

There too were instances when darkness pierced me so quickly and fiercely, I stumbled and fell. Those were which I groped and found my way back to you. 

Growing up, I was taught to be religious. But knowledge gave rise to questions; scepticism fed the doubts. My life was filled with emptied habits: routine had no meaning in silted ground. 

I worshipped answers and found many in people, places, beings. I kept my eyes open and found as many answers as to my growing repository of doubts. 

I cannot define the moment for me exactly. It could be today, or the days before. It could be tomorrow too. But it was one of those moments above that, I, overwhelmed with fatigue, chose to close my eyes. 

Only then did light shine internally; I stopped searching for more. Those firm, undisrupted moments were transitory and I lapsed back as soon as I could to the artifice I’ve construed for myself. 

But time and again, I’d be confronted by the troughs of life, and I’m forced to say: I don’t know. I don’t want to know. In my wretchedness, still, I’ve never forgotten the quiet that nestled within. To believe, simply: for the days that have passed and the days that have yet to be. That is all.

//

This inner light has guided me through a lot of the year and has pushed me to an extent of personal growth I never knew I was capable of. I faced my weakness with courage; allowed loss, criticism and pain to be taken in stride. 

Many times I had prayed for ease and comfort. On some days, unwittingly, I prayed for space. Space entails growth. And discomfort and challenges are a necessary condition for growth. 

I have gotten to a place I had longed to be exactly a year ago, a mental space in which I never envisioned myself to ever be capable of. Somehow, I did it. Not alone, but I did. It came at a huge cost to the attachments I once had, but it also revealed to me my capacity to do better, to do good.

Learning to breathe in and out of the discomfort and unlearning past habits of needing to be loved by everyone. Perhaps God is guiding me in this direction: no is enough, I am enough. There is no need for any further explanation. It is exactly what I’ve asked for: growth above comfort, as comforting comfort is, I know the former pushes me to be stronger and more resilient as an individual.

Dear God,

I've been too tired to write or think lately. Each time I sit down to write, I come up with the same sentences detailing one-liners about my day. I'm not interested in that: I want to feel my interior life glowing, and turning inward (to art, nature, music) is the only way I'm able to feel what I hope to feel.

What I had wished for has been normalised, and it's different when you're living life (the dream), as opposed to dreaming it. Life has a way of banalising the ideal; everything can be quantified and monetised to a certain extent.

But so what?

Should I let the realities of the material blind me to the subtleties of the immaterial? 

How quiet the traffic is on a weekday morning, at 6am. 

How sweet the first ray of light appears to be, without the jostle of bodies hunched over their cellphones?

The issue lies not with what is, but what I choose to see day to day. I've grown to see appraisal and criticism with a distance - not because I believe myself to be superior to them. On the contrary, I see that they're reflections of their needs, practice, and occasionally, ego, and I cannot will myself to be subjected to another's ego.

To practice and teach without the 'I': to learn, to grow, to give - and receive.

This is what Yoga means to me.

The good thing about mandated rest - rest is mandated and not a luxury. The downside? Your mind and body are so used to moving that slowing down takes a full day or two to comprehend or even succumb. Even still, it finds resistance in still waters, reimagining turmoil in the deepest seas of calm. 

I’m reimagining my teaching and practice these days. In one of The Yogaland’s podcast, Jason asked if there’s only one thing you could teach or learn from yoga, what would it be? I took a minute out to pause and reflect and it dawned on me this: can I in any given pose (or situation), find stillness? Be it in forearm wheel, calming my senses which are screaming for release or seated butterfly? Am I able to sit for a minute or two, quieting my restless mind?

This is something I’ve yet to achieve in my own practice. I’ve been movement-oriented and now, realising that yoga to me, has never been about movement, but stillness. And I cannot be a good teacher until I’ve ingrained this stillness in my daily life, practices and eventually, teaching.

I’m also learning to cut out clutter from my life: gossip, noise, unwarranted words… I’m just learning to cut the clutter to a minimum. Little is enough; simple is good enough; simple is good.