Mitali’s Dialogue
It’s the last few days of 2021. This year seems to have whizzed by especially in comparison to 2020. I am not sure it is a good thing - Covid stayed present despite everyone’s best efforts to make it disappear, we opened up socially only to miss the quietness that we got used to in 2020. As the year ends, I am taking a much-needed break visiting family in Dubai. This city of excess that wants to be the biggest, the tallest, the best is so over the top in its man-made beauty that it makes me question when is enough really enough.
The extravagance of this place has instead drawn me to content that helps me reflect on what is truly essential.
Article - I love most of Maria Popova’s articles that she writes in The Marginalian. This recent article titled “Escaping the Trap of Efficiency: The Counterintuitive Antidote to the Time-Anxiety That Haunts and Hampers Our Search for Meaning” struck a chord with me. She quotes from Oliver Burkeman’s book - Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.
This strange moment in history, when time feels so unmoored, might in fact provide the ideal opportunity to reconsider our relationship with it. Older thinkers have faced these challenges before us, and when their wisdom is applied to the present day, certain truths grow more clearly apparent. Productivity is a trap. Becoming more efficient just makes you more rushed, and trying to clear the decks simply makes them fill up again faster. Nobody in the history of humanity has ever achieved “work-life balance,” whatever that might be, and you certainly won’t get there by copying the “six things successful people do before 7:00 a.m.” The day will never arrive when you finally have everything under control — when the flood of emails has been contained; when your to-do lists have stopped getting longer; when you’re meeting all your obligations at work and in your home life; when nobody’s angry with you for missing a deadline or dropping the ball; and when the fully optimized person you’ve become can turn, at long last, to the things life is really supposed to be about.
Book - Morgan Housel's The Psychology of Money appeared on many recommendation lists this year so one night I decided to finally buy it and ended up reading it through the night. It’s a quick read with lots of observations on our relationship with money.
Modern capitalism is a pro at two things: generating wealth and generating envy. Perhaps they go hand in hand; wanting to surpass your peers can be the fuel of hard work. But life isn't any fun without a sense of enough. Happiness, as it's said, is just results minus expectations.
Show - Foundation on Apple TV+. Sci-fi at its best. Humanity in crisis. Based on the award-winning novels by Isaac Asimov, Foundation chronicles a band of exiles on their monumental journey to save humanity and rebuild civilization amid the fall of the Galactic Empire. I am in awe of science fiction writers who can imagine a distant future that suddenly doesn't seem so much like fiction anymore given where the world is going. Isaac Asimov is one of the best. And sitting in this city, discussing the current monarchy and its superfluousness with my kids, this show seems even more telling on the mortality of an empire.
Kinnari’s Dialogue
Listen to presences inside poems,
Let them take you where they will.Follow those private hints,
and never leave the premises.
This is from the one book that I turned to time and again this year and last - The Essential Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks). Rumi’s poems lift me up into that place of love, bringing me closer to the essential truth. Here is a poem I have revisited several times this year as I think about my purpose and what’s next.
TENDING TWO SHOPS
Don't run around this world
looking for a hole to hide in.
There are wild beasts in every cave!
If you live with mice,
the cat claws will find you.
The only real rest comes
when you're alone with God.
Live in the nowhere that you came from,
even though you have an address here.
That's why you see things in two ways.
Sometimes you look at a person
and see a cynical snake.
Someone else sees a joyful lover,
and you're both right!
Everyone is half and half,
like the black and white ox.
Joseph looked ugly to his brothers,
and most handsome to his father.
You have eyes that see from that nowhere,
and eyes that judge distances,
how high and how low.
You own two shops,
and you run back and forth.
Try to close the one that's a fearful trap,
getting always smaller. Checkmate,
this way. Checkmate that.
Keep open the shop
where you're not selling fishhooks anymore.
You are the free-swimming fish.
—
Perhaps I am getting closer to feeling like I have spent more than enough time optimizing for security, more than enough time maximizing comfort as it relates to my career. This poem serves as a reminder to stop living from a place of fear.
Try to close the one that's a fearful trap,
getting always smaller. Checkmate,
this way. Checkmate that.
In a quest of moving towards what is more real, here are two questions I am pondering as I look towards 2022:
What is the one thing I want to practice every day in January?
After shunning routines for most of my life, I realized that I actually thrive in them. So I am thinking of doing one thing every day in January that will help me feel good inside myself. I am pushing myself to keep it simple - one small thing that is doable and something that I can stick with.
What are the two qualities I want to role model next year?
This question was raised in a recent post on Chip Conley’s Wisdom Well blog and it motivated me to pick mine.
a) Kindness - I’d like to start with being kinder to myself given that the force of the inner critic is strong, and then extend it to my husband who is the second person that my inner critic picks on. I know that being kinder to myself and those closest to me is the most challenging. I am hopeful that being kind at home will help me practice it more easily outside.
b) Attitude of Gratitude - This may sound cliché but as someone that is always in pursuit of maximizing my experience, I tend to complain a lot. After several conversations with a close friend who has served as a mirror to me, I realized how this can have an impact on me and those around me. So I’d like to experiment with being more grateful as an antidote to complaining. Can I take a pause when I am about to complain about something and instead find something in that situation to be grateful for?
What questions, books, articles, or shows are inspiring you as you wrap up 2021?