OVERCOMING THE ORDINARY

It is incredibly hot today.

5 pm and the cool of the evening is yet to set in. Thinking during hours like this, sitting down to write a blog post often feels like an uphill task, an exercise in perseverance.

For days now, I have been wondering why it is so hot.

Is this the fault of global warming?

Is the sun just trying hard to show off these days? I mean, just why?

The rainy season should have started showing signs of being on its way. Last year, I clearly remember how much cooler it was around this time. The rains were confidently creating small floods. There was very easy, clement weather on most days.

Well, enough about the weather.

But really, is it enough? I think that there is something very special about being able to notice the world around you in detail. In cases like today, when the world is forcing me to notice it, I find myself struck by a thought; when I wasn’t paying attention, what was I missing?

In my last blog post where I talked about overcoming the feeling of ennui, and how much of an uphill task doing that is, there was a glint of hope there that I would do so. Or, well, continue to do so since I had already started.

I’m very happy that somehow, someway, in this little life of mine, the transcendent beauty of being alive has visited me again. I. Me. This person who believed in some small part of herself that I might have grown out of being shocked by how beautiful the world is.

And how it beautifies us also, when we dare, when we choose to look.

OVERCOMING THE ORDINARY

I think that as wonderful as it is to have an ordinary life - fortunate really, since it means you have a stable, crisis free one - that it is not all that there is to the world.

I am not exactly the biggest risk taker. But, I am also not one to be completely risk-averse either. I have done things that looking back now, I am surprised that I found the courage to do them.

Still, the ordinariness of life can creep up, and consume every thought of wanting better. Just. Like. That.

I remember how intensely I wanted the life that I have now. To be honest, there were years when it felt like a dream, and now it is something that I just accept as doable. As inevitable, really.

I have climbed higher, and what was once a ceiling is now a floor.

That is a good thing. It is a blessing, but over time, it naturally becomes boring. One starts to feel like they’ve outgrown the current size of their life, and then, feel the need to branch out into other things.

Things that might shake up that ordinariness that has become second nature; the basic thrill of waking up in the same bed everyday, the going to the same job, and seeing the same people. Eating the same food.

Doing it all over again, tomorrow, next week.

No.

To be honest, as much as I enjoy it, I feel a little discontent with it. And I don’t want to move on to something that is just slightly better. I want the courage to do the life-altering courageous work I decided on back in 2019 or so. I remember how much of a risk it felt like then, and how looking back now, it feels like it was almost inevitable, where I am now.

Trevor Noah’s latest Netflix special is one of my most recently watched things. In it, he talks about how when people read history, it feels as if what happened was inevitable, but for the people living out that history, that everyday felt like a gamble.

Consider World War II (as Noah said), how at a point it felt like the Germans might win -especially with their head start on the atomic bomb - but looking back now, they seem delusional; a country hemmed at all sides by people who despised them, the Allies coming down on them with a hammer.

In this moment of my own history, it doesn’t feel inevitable that I will figure things out. But, that is just part of being human. We are not promised outcomes, we are not promised certainty, all we have - measly as it seems - is making the choice to come around everyday, and take the life you live with seriousness.

THE THING THAT PULLED MY ATTENTION.

I don’t know which book it is exactly that I saw this idea, but I know it is from C.S Lewis.

He was talking about how he felt a nudge come at him (either him, or his wife - it's fuzzy in my mind now), as though God were at his elbow, tugging to get his attention.

And how he resisted it at first, worried that God wanted to demand something from him. Some virtue or the other, something he loved that he needed to give up in order to grow.

But he was surprised that what was being offered to him, was a gift.

It wasn’t a request for an offering, it was a request for his attention so he could be offered something from the divine.

Something like that happened to me recently. I was sitting at work, listening to a song that I had avoided because well, I just thought it would be a basic song.

How wrong I was.

The song didn’t make me cry. I am generally not a crier-to-music, but it had such a profound effect on me. That song opened a river in me. It felt like, once again, I could see colors that had been washed away by the travails of the past few years.

I mean that something in me, the part of myself that I draw art from, that the inspiration from the divine comes from, woke up.

Or, should I say, was reinvigorated. Like, I was reintroduced to it properly.

That part of myself that fell in love with the whole concept of being an artist, I met her again.

To be honest, over time, as a creator, you learn how to work with the amount of inspiration you get. With the emotions you can muster. And I truly believe that art made in a place of feeling not-okay, is just as valid as art made at the mountaintops.

Still, for the first time in a long time, I felt fully human again. Like a song, a feeling that has echoed through my life came back to me again, offered as a gift. Proclaiming that I am not alone. It felt like I peeked behind the curtain of this basic life, and saw… something.

I really, really needed that. Having it now, it is not something that I plan to take for granted. Getting to see the world in full color; getting to imagine the world beyond the possibilities you limit yourself to. Having hope. Daring at hope, is so beautiful.

You remember that story from Greek mythology? Pandora’s box? Where she opened the box she was expressly told not to open, and unleashed the horrors that humans face.

At the bottom of that box, was a small voice, begging to be opened. And that voice is hope.

Hope can only exist in a fallen world. In a fallen time. Otherwise, it is useless.

Because why do you hope for something you already have? For something you already see?

I think that is an important job that we have to do as humans, to not get carried away by the ordinariness of our lives, to not be defeated beyond thinking about what is possible.

I want to do that. Or, continue to do it.

And I hope you do too.

Well...

Some other things I have been doing to keep hope alive include (of course), reading.

In my last post I talked about the books I planned to read. I got round to reading two of them: Cursed Daughters, and Babel.

I started Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo, and stopped. Because I did not like the way the prose was structured. It felt like it had a rather fractured thought process - and I read in online reviews that perhaps that is what the author intended, but it is not for me.

The Nigerian cover is really GORGEOUS

Oyinkan Braithwaite’s Cursed Daughters was good. She knows how to write characters that feel alive, and I think I preferred this book to her debut. It just feels more mature and thoughtful. I will always appreciate her for writing characters that I feel I could pass by on the street. Seeing that in literature will always be a gift.

Very spooky, very dark-academia vibes.

Babel was also good. I think it is hard to write a story where you give room for character development, and do so in a way that is very intellectually engaging. The questions the book asks (and tries to answer) about language, translation, empire and the pursuit of knowledge were really good. This book took me in directions I wasn’t always expecting, and I love an author that can do that.

Who knows, I might give Katabasis a read. And maybe even Taipei Story once it comes out.

Now, the book I have read so far this month from start to finish is Kiran Desai’s The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny. And wow, what a ride. This book is expansive (read the excerpt that made me fall in love with it here).

Wish I got to read the hard copy. But it was audiobook for me!

I got to learn a lot about Indian culture, and India. And weirdly, New York. The prose was written in such a careful, mannered way. Some people might find that annoying, but it just felt like Desai is a writer who is in love with language.

Plus, it took almost 20 years for her to write this book. I wanted to see what it would contain. And mostly, I wasn’t disappointed. I listened through the 26-hour long audiobook, and that displaced a lot of my other reading.

But I managed to read a few short stories and novellas in-between all the same.

Well, let’s not make this blog post too long, it's getting quite late.

I hope you’re doing okay. And I hope that in some small way of yours, you’ve found room for the door, the window, the cupboard to crack open a little bit, and let in some light. Let in some unshaken, blatant hope.