As we wander, we wonder
In principle, I judge myself for judging. To judge was to be holier than though, to stay in righteous rage, to think we are somehow protected from flaw in the ivory tower of unicorn goodness. But since the genocide began in the last quarter of the past year, I could not help but judge those […]
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The human affliction which is to always desire for something more and for something other varies in degrees for each person. I used to both battle against it as a symptom of ingratitude but also recognise it as a fire for exceptionalism. In this month of peace and submission, I wonder if perhaps it is […]
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I’ve had to take a pause from writing because the intensity of the genocide taking place in the middle east is leaving many of us speechless. For all observers around the world, for those in the humanitarian world, for human rights lawyers and activists, and for those living within a few 100 kilometers from the […]
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It’s been two and a half months away from home and I recently noticed that I am intentionally protecting these emotional waves of nostalgia and not suppressing such futile feelings as I would usually do. Turning over thoughts of my favourite people and places, re-enacting visuals of my parents home, the kitchen, abundant meals at […]
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Every time a discussion of taking an indefinite work sabbatical comes up in different social settings I am reminded that society values the doing and the having more than merely just the being . Some look absolutely flabbergasted ‘but what are you going to do with all your time’, or cynical disbelief ‘sure, sure, see […]
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The beginning or the end of a love story is perhaps the two phases where our adrenalin is the most fully charged – where we are sensitive to being either most alive or most in decline, and inspiration for art is at its most prolific. What happens to that phase where nothing really happens? When […]
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Off late, I’ve come to realise how important blogging has been to my own internal evolution. Ultimately, I’ve used the blog partially to live a more examined life – to inspect deeper into a current state of mind, meditate on the blockages and choose more mindful patterns of behaviour. There were recurring themes of sentiments […]
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Perhaps it is the struggle to fully embody gratitude that always leaves me with mixed feelings about most of my life choices. That and just eternal indecision. After a year or two of returning back home, I developed the indefatigable itch to relocate. I yearned to go back to the Middle East – a region […]
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It took me quite late in life to understand that the psychology behind the perfectionist was often motivated by low self-esteem. The idea that without having accomplished something admirable, then one didn’t have much value. The shame and self-hate that accompanies not being perfect was crippling and unnatural. This was a recent epiphany I’ve been […]
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Lately, I find that there is a different quality of thoughts in my travels. In my youth, I traveled to seek for a new life, metaphorically and sometimes literally. I was seeking to find a space I could see and know myself, a place for a future self. Every city was attractive in its own […]
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It’s said that desire is half of life, and indifference is half of death. These days, I’ve been swimming in the shores of death. As the year draws to a close, I review all that has been in the past 11 months and I’m surprised by the richness of its activity, yet its poverty in […]
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I fancied myself a pretty competent independent traveller but things became shamefully co-dependent once I got married. In a recent long flight on my own where he wouldn’t be waiting at the airport, I was a ball of nerves. What if I got lost at immigration, what if I didn’t find my bag, what if […]
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I stumbled into the yawning jaws of mild depression in the last quarter of the past year. It was mild because deep inside I had some confidence that I would eventually come out of the tunnel. That eventually, the compulsion to wallow in terrible melancholia will slowly start to ebb away. In its replacement, a […]
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Questioning the merits of living life in a value-bubble has been with me for awhile, even pre-Covid. Essentially, as we get older and accumulate a better sense of our identity, likes and dislikes, we start to remove people and circumstances which don’t fit with our life values. There is a logic and usefulness to this, […]
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The blog has been shuffled into the background as life got in the way, and inspiration ran dry. As KL shifted into yet another semi-lockdown, new daily patterns emerged and reflecting on the interior self became harder. I decided that I would only write if a musing pursued me, instead of me pursuing musings. And […]
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Different themes of retaliation often whirl through my thoughts. It is the one feature of human behaviour that has debilitated our growth as an individual, a community, a nation and geo-politically. There are countless examples of how cycles of retaliations eventually demolishes us into human rubble – World War II, the Yugoslavian conflict, Rwandan genocide, […]
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It seems to be the grand desire carved into so many of us – that if you haven’t ‘arrived’ you haven’t then ‘fully existed’. People tend to be enraptured by those they believe have earned a social standing, have won some recognition and public status for their visible achievements. In whatever social tribe, a hierarchy […]
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For some, so much of life has been about the deifying of another. Whether it’s parental deference, or how we elevate our life partner. It is inevitable that as life adds day to day, and we move through it all in close intimacy with our loved ones, realities emerge. I heard a saying once about […]
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Perhaps it is a logical irony that graduation speeches make more sense two decades into full fledged adulthood, than it did when one listened to it at the brink of one’s journey. As they say, the youth is wasted on the young. At the age of 21, second-hand information seemed too speculative and abstract. Anyone […]
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Certain world events have made me question our need to have things. When hearing about those who have lost their material belongings during the Beirut blasts, I stopped and wondered about our quest for ownership in this world. Concepts like possessing, having, and accumulating belongings repelled me with a little more intensity. Where does it […]
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The past, they say, is another country. In some ways, it is a healthy sign of our evolution, if we consider the past as a place remote and untouched by our current space. There seems to be a sense that we have moved on with the times, seized the present and are marching onwards for […]
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When plunged in the depth of dark times we often wonder ‘why us’? Why couldn’t it all be like the ideas we wanted, the hopes we carried, the desires we nurtured. In our minds, we illogically romanticise the lives of others and how it seemed to be unharmed by the maladies that we believe […]
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Quite often life has been about embracing our own internal fortitude in solitude. After every episode of difficulty, the reiterating lesson is often the realisation that while love and companionship are blessings, an honest lesson of evolution is one that requires us to dig inside our own internal resources for elevation. How do we live […]
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When life fundamentally does not manifest itself to be the image you had in your head the journey is very much about shifting to accommodate your new reality. The answer is to not resist. Embrace, do all that you can to elevate the status quo to what you want it to be and accept that […]
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The Lockdown has awakened something in all of us privileged enough to sit at home and luxuriate in boredom. A time to reassess our past journey as an individual and as the collective humanity, and ask ourselves whether we want to be in auto mode or clear out some cobwebs of congestion. A big chunk […]
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When we reflect back on our life, it’s fair to say the most fulfiling times are those where we are fully engaged in the enterprise of living. Even when life caused us pain, the pain stems from a longing for more from existence. The most ideal combination is when we are able to balance between […]
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Another brief rumination. The year started out with some melancholia as multiple well-known public figures left the world in such a tragic, shocking haste. Of course, none was known personally to me but I felt as broken as the bereaved. All of the departed left behind grief-stricken spouses and children and by all accounts were […]
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Looking for The Higher Self 