Alone, Lonely and Sadly

A colleague told me the story about her father-in-law and his family a while back. He was dying, and they took him home, so that the family could look after him. The sad truth is, the old man had left a legacy of irresponsible parenting. As my colleague told me - "He only knew how to make babies and go fishing. He doesn't know how to look after his kids." 

The old man had eight children - yet at the end of his days, it was his daughter-in-laws who bathed, him, fed him, took care of him. His own children were not available. This is the truth of a family with no bond. My colleague told me how her mother-in-law was angry as the man was dying - after all the years, she was still angry at the husband who wasn't around, and whom she thought ruined her life. 

When the man finally passed away, he was alone. His wife eventually went to check on him, and found that he was not breathing. So a man with a wife and eight children died alone, lonely and sadly.

ESSAY | Why I Teach Plato to Plumbers

Good article on the importance of liberal arts in our education. [ Full article ]

My answer is that we should strive to be a society of free people, not simply one of well-compensated managers and employees. Henry David Thoreau is as relevant as ever when he writes, “We seem to have forgotten that the expression ‘a liberal education’ originally meant among the Romans one worthy of free men; while the learning of trades and professions by which to get your livelihood merely, was considered worthy of slaves only.”

My Saturday Evening

It's been a while since I had time alone with a book. I am out at a Starbucks, people watching, drinking a hot cafe latte and reading. It's ironical that I am only able to find quiet solitude outside in public, surrounded by strangers and not at home with family. That's life, I guess.

I've just started on Katie Roiphe's In Praise of Messy Lives, and it's a hoot. "L'hypocrisie de la bourgeoisie" seems to be the overarching theme of her collection of essays. I'm on the first two essays, where she talked about the fact that she had to raise two children (from different fathers) as a single mother, and the reactions from those around her. She described the parallels between The Age of Innocence and when she was going through her divorce, and later The Scarlet Letter against when she was raising a child without the child's father. Her situation brought out some annoying (to me) reactions that reminds me how it's often not about you, but rather, it's about them - and people are most intolerant of the situations that they are unable to bear in their own lives. It helps that she is interestingly unrepentant about it all.

I did find her observation of the perception of single mothers interesting:

Part of what seems threatening or unsettling about the single mother's household is precisely that sense that the mother may be glimpsed as more of a person, that these children are witnessing a struggle they should not be seeing, that their mother is very early on a regular, complicated person, rather than simply an adult who is part of the opaque, semi-separate adult culture of the house.

I'm reminded of Desperate Housewives, especially the character Bree (the red head) with her perfectly constructed family life that underpinned a psychotic intensity that absolutely made it absolutely believable that she was capable of murder. What is it with the need for perfection?

Life is more interesting when we stop trying to be perfect and allow the messiness.

So here's to a messy life.

MURAKAMI | Run To Live Life to the Fullest

“People sometimes sneer at those who run every day, claiming they'll go to any length to live longer. But don't think that's the reason most people run. Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest. If you're going to while away the years, it's far better to live them with clear goals and fully alive than in a fog, and I believe running helps you to do that. Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that's the essence of running, and a metaphor for life — and for me, for writing as whole. I believe many runners would agree”

― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

(Photo: Haruki Murakami, after finishing his first marathon from Athens to Marathon in the blistering summer heat - July 18th, 1983. [Source])

Donna Tartt wins Pulitzer Prize

So Donna Tartt won the Pulitzer this year for The Goldfinch - which I brought to Amsterdam as travel reading (Bad idea to bring thick books on a trip. When will I ever learn?) Some parts of it interested me - but the narrative fell flat midway. I will probably finish it eventually. I still can't quite decide if this book is overrated. I had better hopes for it, but it's not engaging me the way I had hoped.

That said, I am very taken with this picture of Donna Tartt, taken by Anne Leibovitz for Vanity Fair.

MUSIC | Nirvana, featuring Lorde covering "All Apologies"

Nirvana gets inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and they decided a all-female line-up is the way to go. So here's a fan's wet dream of Nirvana hits, with Lorde, Kim Gordon, Joan Jett and St Vincent all on stage. Lorde does the vocals on "All Apologies". I'm old enough to remember when Kurt Cobain sang it.

I heart this.

ELIZABETH GILBERT | "Take me with you in spirit ... Tell us what you find. I will follow you later"

I saw this Facebook entry by Elizabeth Gilbert today. Travels is on the top of my mind lately, since I came back from Amsterdam and Paris just a few weeks ago. The question of why we travel is, and how it changes us. I thought she but it rather well. But most of all, this lines, that a neighbour said to her before she embarked on the journey that would lead to Eat, Pray, Love:

"Take me with you in spirit. Take all of us with you, who dream of someday doing this but who right now staying home and taking care of the contracts we have signed with our lives. Tell us what you find. I will follow you later."

Travel well, and when you return, share.

WHY WE MUST SOMETIMES GO...

Right now I'm reading for the first time the great memoir TRACKS by Robyn Davidson — a classic of both women's and Australian literature. For those of you who aren't familiar with this book, it's wonderful — the chronicle of a woman who, back in the 1970s, rode 1,700 miles all alone across the Australian Outback with three camels.

Why did she do it? What I love about this story is that she does not ever really provide a why. She did it because she needed to do it.

A lot of people told her she was crazy to set out on such a dangerous journey, and that she would probably die during it. But, Davidson recounts, she had one conversation before she left with an older female friend who told her: "I really like what you're doing...Getting off your butt and actually doing something is important for all of us...It's important that we leave each other and the comfort of it, and circle away, even though it's hard sometimes, so that we can come back and swap information about what we've learned, even if what we do changes us, and we risk not recognizing each other when we return."

THAT IS WHY WE MUST SOMETIMES GO AWAY.

Not only for our own benefit, but for the benefit of each other. To model another way of being. To represent, out there in the wild world. To bring back the treasure of sharing what we have learned. I remember the week before I went traveling for EAT PRAY LOVE, a neighbor (a mother of two young children) gave me a long hug and said into my ear, "Take me with you in spirit. Take all of us with you, who dream of someday doing this but who right now staying home and taking care of the contracts we have signed with our lives. Tell us what you find. I will follow you later."

And she did — about ten years later. At which point, I gave her that same hug and said the same words into her ear. As I have said those exact same words to countless other people, as they are about to embark on their own journey. Go away now, but take us with you in spirit; tell us what you learned when you return.

If it's time for you to go, go NOW. But take notes. Think of your journey toward self-discovery and adventure as a community service.

You'll make us all better for it,

HEART,

LG

MATTHIESSEN | Life Will Never Be Simple

"I dream of simplicity, but I'm as far from it as ever. That is my practice, how to be in the world and remain simple. One day perhaps I'll accept the fact that I am never going to find the simple life. Maybe the first step toward simplicity will be to accept that my life will never be simple even if I go live in a cave and subsist on green nettles like Milarepa."
— Peter Matthiessen

Peter Matthiessen RIP

Peter Matthiessen passed away. Time to re-read The Snow Leopard. [Source]

"How do we live a creative life without cutting your ears off?"

How do we "live a creative life without cutting your ears off?" That's the question Elizabeth Gilbert talks about on the Radiolab: Me, Myself and Muse.

Talk to your muse. Make it follow you.

Elizabeth Gilbert & Janneke Siebelink at the Hortus Botanicus in Amsterdam

It's not a secret that I enjoy Elizabeth Gilbert's writings. I believe she has a curious passion about the subjects she writes about, which comes through in her writing. Her books always led me to want to learn more, to see more. For me, that is what good writing is about - it makes you open to new experiences, more open in your hearts and minds.

I read "The Signature of All Things" last year. I saw just one copy of the book in a bookstore in New York and I grabbed it. I didn't want a bag for the book, and the guy at the bookstore just remarked, "You're going to get into it straightaway?" He was right.

I was also paying attention to the publicity on the book at that time, and I knew it wasn't supposed to be available yet (which made me wonder how the bookstore acquired their ONE copy.) The book probably taught me more about botany than I ever needed to learn, but most of all, the "Dutch-ness" of many of the characters made me curious about Amsterdam, and I wanted to see the Hortus Botanicus, where the protagonist of the book eventually ended up.

So here I am, planning for a trip to Amsterdam in a few weeks time. Anyway, here's the video of Elizabeth Gilbert at the Hortus Botanicus. Thank you, Alma, and Elizabeth Gilbert. I will definitely make a trip down there when I am in Amsterdam.

BOOKS | The Hunger Games

I just finished the final book in The Hunger Games series. One of my friends commented a few days that she was surprised it took so long for me to hit these books, since these are the type of books one would expect me to read. Fair enough - just that I had been on something of a reading dry spell, and I haven't actually been reading much fiction the last few years. I had been reading for work, for knowledge - but I haven't actually been reading for fun. Perhaps the fact that I was so taken with the Hunger Games books is a good sign that I am at this place in my life when I finally am able to read for fun.

The books were definitely richer and darker than the movie - which always reminds me of how the cinema can be such a vulgar entertainment. The Hunger Games is a narrative on the idea of Panem et Circenses (Latin for "Bread and Circus") where politicians rule by material appeasement and entertainment. Cinema itself might qualify as our modern mode of Circenses. Then people are rich enough, and entertained enough, they forget things like civic duties, and ignore injustice within the political and social system, it seems.

Which feels so close to modern life - and I am as guilty of this as anyone.

I love the social consciousness in The Hunger Games books, and while I disliked the tedious journey the third book took to get to the conclusion - it was a fitting ending.

I just hate the love triangle in the book between Katniss, Gale and Peeta. Quit it - the story of Katniss is more interesting than the love triangle. Not every story with a female lead needs romance.

Stephen King and Carrie

I'm not really a big fan of Stephen King. I think some of his books are longer than necessary and he needs better editors. I do like some of his short stories though, and I believe the truth of why his writing is so compelling is because of his understanding of human psychology.

I was reading this essay on Mental Floss earlier about the story behind King's first bestseller, Carrie. Stephen King started his writing career sending his stories to men's magazines for tiny paychecks (if he's lucky). Someone accused him of not being able to write a female character convincingly. He decided to pick up the challenge, and the idea for Carrie emerged from his brain.

King modeled Carrie White after two of the loneliest girls he remembered from high school. One was a timid epileptic with a voice that always gurgled with phlegm. Her fundamentalist mother kept a life-size crucifix in the living room, and it was clear to King that the thought of it followed her down the halls. The second girl was a loner. She wore the same outfit every day, which drew cruel taunts. By the time King wrote Carrie, both of those girls were dead. The first died alone after a seizure. The second suffered from postpartum depression and, one day, aimed a rifle at her stomach and pulled the trigger. “Very rarely in my career have I explored more distasteful territory,” King wrote, reflecting on how both of them were treated.

It made me think about Stephen King's writings - the ones I have actually read: The Shawshank Redemption, Different Seasons and The Green Mile - his "non-horror" works. King as a writer, is an astute observer of human nature. But more than that, there is deep compassion in his stories.

Date a Girl Who Runs

"Date a girl who runs because she knows how to quietly, patiently work every week on a goal she set that’s half a year or a year away. She’ll be working on her time, her distance, but what she’s really working on, is herself."

~ From Elephant Journal: Date a Girl Who Runs

I am still not sure if I am a runner yet. Lately I seem to have hit a stump on running. The insomnia and old injuries did nor help. I'm not sure why it feels so difficult to wake up in the morning to get things done. Just feels tired. Real runners are not supposed to feel this way, right? Real runners just go out and get it done no matter what, right?

Pain

"Compared to them I'm pretty used to losing. There are plenty of things in this world that are way beyond me, plenty of opponents I can never beat. Not to brag, but these girls probably don't know as much as I do about pain. And, quite naturally, there might not be a need for them to know it."

- Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Starting 2014

It's now the fifth day of 2014 and I confess - things have not been going well.

Well, let's start with the insomnia that has been plaguing me. Okay, I am a chronic insomniac, so that's not a surprise. It is however, making some of my life-changing intentions a little difficult to implement. I want to run more in the morning, I want to write more, meditate regularly, and do more yoga. All of which is difficult when I get less than 2 hours of sleep every day. Yes, you read that right. Two bloody hours.

But one thing I can do right now is to blog.

I spent some time deciding the books to start 2014 with. I decided on The 1963 Operation Coldstore in Singapore - a title on a little discussed episode in my country's history. Maybe I am getting older. I yearn for the country I grew up in, except I look all around me these days, and I find myself in an alien, unfamiliar place. I feel like a child who grew up, and realized one day that her parents are not who she thought they were. I am questioning the things that were taught to me in school.

I also picked Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. I have been doing a bit of running the past year. I finished a few 5Ks, 10Ks, and 2 Half-Marathons. But come 2014, I feel like I lost my mojo. Reading about Murakami's running and his life seems like a good way to think about my own journey.

Since we are on Haruki Murakami, is anyone else looking forward to the English translation of his new book in 2014? Finally, we will see Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage.

What other titles am I looking forward to in 2014?

Well, I heard Sarah Waters has a new book out. The Paying Guests, which seems to be a follow-up to The Little Stranger. I have to find my copy of The Little Stranger among my bookshelves. I seem to have lost that title when we moved to our current place a few years ago.

Geoff Dyer, it seems, also has a new book out - Another Great Day at Sea: Life Aboard the USS George H.W. Bush. I totally expect the book to be meandering and off-tangent, and absolutely fun. Somehow he got himself on an American supercarrier for this book.

Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek will also be coming out. I came across Sinek's TED Talk a while back, where he talked about how leaders attract the people that share their passions. What does it take for a leader to transform distrust and cynicism to safety and trust? I guess I want to know what he has learned, and how I can apply that in my own life.

For a little light-hearted reading, I may pick up Karen Armstrong's Fields of Blood: A History of Religion and Violence.

Right. Lots of light reading for 2014.

Welcome 2014

“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. 

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something. 

 So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it. Make your mistakes, next year and forever.” 

 ~ Neil Gaiman

Books Read 2013

1. Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison • Piper Kerman
2. The Signature of All Things • Elizabeth Gilbert
3. Teach Us To Sit Still: A Sceptic's Search for Health and Healing • Tim Parks
4. The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling • Stephen Cope
5. The Faraway Nearby • Rebecca Solnit
6. The God of the Hive • Laurie R. King
7. The Language of Bees: A Mary Russell Novel • Laurie R. King
8. Running with the Mind of Meditation: Lessons for Training Body and Mind • Sakyong Mipham
9. Thrive: The Vegan Nutrition Guide to Optimal Performance in Sports and Life • Brendan Brazier
10. True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart • Tara Brach, PhD
11. Running the Edge: Discover the Secrets to Better Running and a Better Life • Adam Goucher & Tim Catalano
12. Finding Freedom: Writings from Death Row • Jarvis Jay Masters
13. Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers • Karyl McBride, PhD

Haruki Murakami's 2005 Marathon Time

Haruki Murakami's 2005 New York Marathon Time: 4:10:17

I'm slightly obsessed with celebrities marathon time lately.

The Top Five Regrets of the Dying

It's getting closer to Christmas. (Yes, I know it's only November - but the decorations are up at the stores. )

Christmas always put me in a strange mood. I get moody, more reflective, and sad. I get nostalgic, and I miss people. Right now I need to remind myself of this - and hope to live a life without these regrets. So I'm posting this here again, as a reminder to myself.

No regrets. 

Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. She recorded their dying epiphanies in a blog called Inspiration and Chai, which gathered so much attention that she put her observations into a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.

Ware writes of the phenomenal clarity of vision that people gain at the end of their lives, and how we might learn from their wisdom. "When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently," she says, "common themes surfaced again and again."

Here are the top five regrets of the dying, as witnessed by Ware:

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

"This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it."

2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.

"This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children's youth and their partner's companionship. Women also spoke of this regret, but as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence."

3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.

"Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result."

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

"Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying."

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

"This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called 'comfort' of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content, when deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again."

What's your greatest regret so far, and what will you set out to achieve or change before you die?