Tag: Life

Growing Up #10: What Have We Done to Our Homes?

Alfa M. Shakya4 Comments

I’ve always been a fan of retreats, but then it struck me this time. What have we done to our homes that we must go far far away from it to find our peace back? Isn’t home supposed to be the inviolable place we rested our minds, the impermeable barrier that kept us safe, the impervious door no evil could pass?

This is of course not to say travel and retreats are a waste. It’s just very ironic that our schedules have made us their slaves. We’re always connected, and a few minutes of disconnection can feel like a year of missing out.

I’ve been reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, and a line from the book about the domestication of wheat strikes so familiar to what technology has done to us:

We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us. 

Perhaps technology has domesticated us. Harari calls us a hackable creature, thanks to technology again. Read about it here.

I’ve known myself as someone who has always loved being home. I might be the classic introvert that personality quizzes describe. I love being at home – wiping dust off the book shelf, arranging and rearranging toiletries on the rack, or just playing the keyboard.

These days though I find stress creeping into the walls of my room, insecurity emerging out of social media taking over my dusty study desk, unnecessary emails gnawing up my creating time.

And I ask myself, what have I done to my home?

I must change it. It must be changed. Drawing lines – it might just be as simple, undecorated and acetic as that. Just as hard.

Growing Up is a weekly series on well, growing up, published every Saturday (Cheat week this Week as I wrote this on a Tuesday). It’s been 10 consecutive weeks I’ve been writing this specific column in my blog here. Can’t believe it’s 10 weeks already. They were right: time passes any way.  

Growing Up #9: ‘Tis The Season of Goodbyes

Alfa M. ShakyaLeave a comment

August – the eighth month of the calendar, the month when Summer isn’t gone yet, but the winds begin to feel chilly, a telling sign of how we have lived past over half of the year; a sign of the coming cold in the horizons.

August – a month of goodbyes when the suitcases are neatly packed, weighed, and wrapped. They hold not just belongings but memories and scents of yesterday, and now have pasted tags over their bodies keeping them from getting lost. It is how much can fit inside the weighing limit that one can carry of ones past – crunched, crumbled, convoluted.

I bid goodbye to friends, their eyes yearning for a better tomorrow and their hearts swelling with hope. I wish them the best that there can be. Together we’ve bid our goodbyes to many it seems. Maybe we have lost count now. Some goodbyes are left for electronic wires to convey, some other even unsaid.

There’s something strange about this season, a signal of transition. A fleeting season that could define many tomorrows, or may be it could just be a passing season. An ephemeral season that holds a memory or two for most, of when they left, and when they let go.

August – when the leaves turn yellow in some places, it’s still green here.

Growing Up, a series on Growing Up, every Saturday – because Saturdays are perfect for overthinking. 

Growing Up #8: Some infinities are bigger than other infinities

Alfa M. ShakyaLeave a comment

It’s John Green for you, from The Fault in Our Stars:

Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.

I recently rediscovered a math concept that between two numbers, lets say 2 and 3, there are infinite numbers between them (which becomes a headache when solving tricky standardized test problems!). But there are even more infinite numbers between 1 and 3. So maybe that’s what John Green meant, because literally how big are infinities?

We’re just like the numbers on the numbers scale. Some of us closer, some farther away. And yet no matter how close we are, there’s an infinite distant between us. Family. Friends. Colleagues.

We can never truly come to a full understand of someone else, no matter how close they may be. It can be frightening, but also liberating. We cannot control anybody else’s actions, we cannot think for anybody else – given the infinite distance between us.

Perhaps it’s easier to go on with adult life with this in mind that our understanding of people in our lives is limited. Sometimes there are no whys that can be answered. And this could make it easier to not take everything personally.

We can only act for ourselves and we might as well do it wisely.

Into week 8 of writing a column on growing up every Saturday (it’s cheat week as I wrote this on a Sunday). 

Growing Up #7: The Merry-Go-Round of Life

Alfa M. ShakyaLeave a comment
I’ve listened to people talk about their lives as the words innocently sprung out of their mouths and crystallized into lines. A line or two at most, not an elaborate conversation, and yet I know I’ve been hit by circles of perspectives. I’ve listened not through ears, but through my heart. It is as though we are all in a merry-go-round of our lives as we come across others on the ride.
 
I’ve listened to an experienced elder doubt his life actions of living without concrete plans. I’ve listened to a professional admit how he thought this was it after he landed the job, but a change came along. I’ve listened to a senior share his career plans going sour. I’ve listened to another senior be brave about their catastrophic loss. 
 
As I listened, I realized it must all be a part of life. I saw them become more human. Perhaps the moments where I do not seem to find a way ahead is making me more human as well.

Jeff Goins writes in his book Real Artists Don’t Starve:

You’re never done becoming yourself.

The ride continues.

And here’s a wonderful piece by Joe Hisaishi, Merry Go Round of Life. 

I cannot believe I’ve made it to the 7th week and I have been writing this column every week on my blog. I’ve not had a hot chocolate for a while, but Saturday continues to be a reflective day.

Growing Up, a series on well, growing up, every Saturday.