“People of Orphalese, the wind bids me to leave you.
Less hasty I am than the wind, yet I must go.
We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us as where sunset left us.”
- The Farewell, The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
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2020 has been life-changing, difficult, good, and many more things for us. Most importantly, it has passed. Many of us got together with loved ones, the others, lost. It seems like too many years were packed into one.
Even though one cannot touch or physically experience time, it has played an important role in all our lives. Everything we do is guided by this concept of time. My mother tells me “everything has to be done in its own time”. Get into school at three, graduate at twenty-one, get a job at twenty-two, marry by twenty-five (and god forbid if you’re still single after twenty-five, that’s your time to regret your presence in this world). Every day has its tasks divided according to time, work in eight-hour shifts, sleep for eight-hours at night (this doesn’t apply to you if you’re an insomniac idiot like me), eat, play, and what not.
We entered a new year, still in the middle of a pandemic, our hopes high for 2021. Surprisingly, we are already ten days into 2021 and I hyperventilate as I realise this while typing. This year forced us to make radical changes in our lives. I lived the most around my family in three years, because of COVID. And I can’t be more grateful, because of this, I was able to navigate through so many mental hurdles that I otherwise would have not been able to. I am sure we all have our stories of what we learned in 2020, the changes we made, the changes we were forced to make. (giving up junk food being the most difficult, no?)
So maybe in this email, I don’t write anything new. But just what I feel about time, about new year, and about its influence on our lives, maybe a few resolutions?
I remember watching a TED talk on existential crisis when the speaker talked about how we are different people, every second of our lives. It’s what each second, good or bad, contributes in us being where we are. If I am to take that as a working hypothesis, the person that you are right now, reading this sentence will be a different person than when you will be done reading this essay. And that thought is scary yet satisfying to me. It takes the pressure off of one year and gives me the agency to plan my time not as per a day or a year, but the way I might want it. Sure, most of my plans may fail, but I will not have given away the accountability. I will not have given the power to time. And so, I thought I would mention a list of things we might look forward to, from this moment on. And Inshallah, it will make our 2021 less about the year, about COVID, or anything else but us. Feel free (in fact, I would love it) to mention your list and share them with us by email or on the thread of this newsletter.
Go ahead. Make your own list and own your list. (see what I did there?)
- Move away from an unhealthy lifestyle. Let’s not glamourise overworking and compromising with our personal lives. Get enough sleep (seriously, do that), drink lots of water and eat good food. Better yet, make your own simple homemade food. Know what you’re eating. Take long walks. Exercise. Practice silence. Most of all, be there when all of this happens. Bring your mind back to these tasks and not let it find an escape. Keep that stupid phone aside (warna mummy ko bolo phone jala hi de, she will be very happy to do that btw).
- Keep your mental health in check. Talk to yourselves and identify your feelings and emotions. Get help whenever needed. Talk to a mental health professional. Cry when you feel like, talk to people you love about your feelings more and unimportant things less.
- Move out of toxic relationships. Friends, family, romantic relationships. It is equally important to think about yourself as much as you would think about the other person. This year, maybe try to let people go who are not making your lives better. And be genuinely there for the ones that do make your life better in their own simple yet adorable ways.
- Understand your responsibility and locate your position in the society. Sit down and reflect on the things you can do better. People you can judge less, and things you can do for them more. Identify your own biases and work on them. It’s extremely difficult, but probably worth. In extreme cases, tolerate each other’s conflicting political opinions without judging.
- Know your carbon footprint. Observe your lifestyle and how it might affect the environment. Make plausible changes to be a better person to nature.
- Normalise talking about periods, masturbation, sex, and divorce. Normalise women taking control of their own lives. Normalise people never getting married, adopting children, not wanting to have children; rather than shaming them, support them. Normalise talking about low mental health days, about depression and suicide.
- It’s okay to say ‘I don’t know’ to things you don’t know about. Be curious to learn more, and listen to everyone in order to understand.
- Lastly, LIVE.
(If this list came across as preachy, please ignore. I am in no position to do so. I try to follow these and fail almost every day, yet try again the next day. We are in the same boat.)
Some good reads you can indulge yourselves into:
1. Matthew Walker, talks about the very dangerous effects of lack of sleep on our lives. It’s so fascinating. I have a f*cked up sleep cycle and his ideas scare me so much I like it. He has a book called Why We Sleep that talks about the science of sleep and dreams. If you’re also someone who wants to have a healthy sleep cycle like me, please order the book and read.
2. This poem by Khalil Gibran on love has stayed in my head rent free for so many days.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/148579/on-love
3. There were also some good news on the Internet, like this one.
4. I have been hearing there are some new policy changes that WhatsApp plans to bring. Here’s an article I found helpful that you can read and know what will happen with the new policy.
Thanks for reading. Please feel free to share this newsletter to your friends and family and everyone who you think might benefit. I try working very hard writing these essays and curating resources and it would mean a lot to me if you’d suggest people about it. <3
And have a very happy new year. May you rock as much as Ross and Monica’s dance routine in 2021. :)