A Leisurely Pint of Sunshine: Delights of the Ordinary No. 35
A newsletter on ‘pausing’ in our unpleasant temerarious tempo of hurriedness.
Hi, I am Anugrah. I write Delights of the Ordinary for us who are trapped in the world of hustle culture but are quiet at heart with an itching creative bone. This newsletter intersects culture, art and our practical 9-5 job space. If you know even one person who will benefit from reading Delights of the Ordinary, feel free to share it with them.
Delights of the Ordinary currently is a free publication. Yet it takes me many hours of effort to write and curate it. I may need lots of coffee to keep me going. You can
There are people in the world who - thanks to a lack of intellectual acuity - have a life that is surprisingly artificial.
- Haruki Murakami
At last, when the nippy February-ness lazily rolls up to let in the feisty fervour of the flower beds of the spring season, my expectation to match up this newsletter with its optimistic vibrancy sometimes feels strangled.
Because, on a closer look, the seasons adjust in their rhythmic order but our world around is constantly busy and bumbling with its crestfallen chaotic duties.
Mostly after the pandemic, it has made us all more vicious and more propelled by our work demands. The pandemic sped up the Internet trajectory up to many notches. One famous report says that the traffic jams have doubled on the roads than before the lockdown happened to us! Now we have more insurance premiums, more inflation, more bombing, and more children stripped of their basic rights.
The world keeps revolving with its difficult demands on our logical thinking putting us under a form of compassion fatigue - a feeling as if we are crawling into the foxhole again.
Hence, for a small writer like me who has just started writing from some obscure corner of the world, showing the guts to sort of renounce her old profession and restart as a writer, I hope to nudge you to find some breathing space in our synthetic living, making sure that as you adjust to the new hyper-demanding work culture my newsletters may keep you a cheerful company when you need a little respite.
And if at all, I will forever lecture the importance of ‘pausing’ in our unpleasant temerarious tempo of hurriedness. Since we are conditioned to boast about living in ‘cities that never sleep’ - as our medal of honour, certifying our busyness… “and have come to see the very notion of “leisure” not as essential to the human spirit but as self-indulgent luxury reserved for the privileged or deplorable idleness reserved for the lazy.”
“…[T]he world is closer to colonizing Mars than it is to fixing the world’s broken workplaces.”
- Gallup CEO Jon Clifton wrote in one report.
The Lexicon:
The word “workaholic” was coined in 1947 in Canada by the Toronto Daily Star, a daily newspaper, saying:
“If you are cursed with an unconquerable craving for work, call Workaholics Synonymous, and a reformed worker will aid you back to happy idleness.”
‘Happy idleness’ was a freedom to be in those days and having an ‘unconquerable craving for work’ was to become a doomed workaholic who needed help!
Is Leisure a Luxury or Laziness?
German philosopher Josef Pieper, author of Leisure, the Basis of Culture, describes how the meaning of leisure is distorted over time. He says, “What is normal is work, and the normal day is the working day.”
“The simple “break” from work — the kind that lasts an hour, or the kind that lasts a week or longer — is part and parcel of daily working life. It is something that has been built into the whole working process... The “break” is there for the sake of work.”
“Leisure, then, is a condition of the soul… since leisure is not necessarily present in all the external things like “breaks,” “time off,” “weekend,” “vacation,” and so on…” “Against the exclusiveness of the paradigm of work as activity… there is leisure as “non-activity” — an inner absence of preoccupation, a calm, an ability to let things go, to be quiet.”
The mind-numbing scrolling of endless Facebook updates lures us to believe this is a leisurely activity. Or if we get a tad bit wiser, a zealous digital detox, makes us feel we are spending time in leisure. Yet if you examine closely we are merely renaming distraction as leisure. Because that is our only definition to turn away from the unpleasantness of the world.
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.”
- Annie Dillard
Why Do We Need to Find Meaning in Our Everyday?
Because we only know the value of things when they are taken away from us. The ordinary is not obvious until it becomes not obvious!
The everyday becomes a longing only when we are hit by a crisis of war or a health casualty. It is then a simple cup of carefree tea suddenly is a delightful luxury. The wonderful resting bench beside the brook, a blushing sunset, endless chatting about your daily activity in the most glorious ways - all of it become the poised desired pitstops for us!
Can Slowing Down Help Me?
As much as I understood slowing down can speed up things around us. Because, we have to be reminded in our star-struck, bemoaned understanding that we can make some goodness even when we are not owning the blinding life and deafening progress of hoarding, acquiring and display of our possessions.
“Wallace Stevens in his forties, living in Hartford, Connecticut, hewed to a productive routine. He rose at six, read for two hours, and walked another hour—three miles—to work. He walked home from work… After dinner he retired to his study; he went to bed at nine. On Sundays, he walked in the park. I don’t know what he did on Saturdays. Perhaps he exchanged a few words with his wife…”
- Annie Dillard on Wallace Stevens, the American Modernist Poet (1879-1955)
Life is this. And so I wish, for you and for me that we just halt for a while and adore what we have now to hold. Because when evil strikes we will have less, very less time to think. Because then our lives will unravel like a rope and bit by bit fall apart.
And therefore, my prayer is every poem, every art, every book, every film, every song that you carry within may become your way to explore complexness and rationales, coaxing you to loosen up a bit. Because our lives and the lives of others are bigger than the anxious busyness of restocking our wants and more grand than how the world defines our success of becoming.
The heart of quietness streamed with art, culture and philosophical thought is not to make us Socrates or Aristotle but to help us make some sound decisions in our hamster-cage sort of life.
Hence, I reckon we will do much better. Better than what we are bombarded with at every level. Since we may think of ourselves as successful, yet still spend hours stuck in traffic.
We can redefine our success of becoming!
“Money buys happiness in the same way drugs bring pleasure: Incredible if done right, dangerous if used to mask a weakness, and disastrous when no amount is ever enough.”
- Morgan Housel
To End:
And so for this week, I will not inundate you with Internet blobs, but leave you with this calm poem by W.H. Davies, called “Leisure” (written in 1911):
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
This week may you find the warmth of the spring, courage to weather your storms and soak up in the glint of the balming sun.
- Anugrah
Delights of the Ordinary started somewhere in April of twenty-twenty-three with just two readers and now has a readership of 140+ of you. I am highly grateful for the time and room that you give me in your heart.
Stumbled on my publication? Explore all my previous editions here. And in case you don’t wish to spend time browsing then complement this post with Fomo, Jomo, Wagmi And Why We Need Them in Our Lives, We are Trying to Eliminate Complications, Not Add to Them or read about The Art of Walking.
And don’t forget to
With the question my boss asking how do you want to enter the weekend? What are the things you want to do? Only one thing was on my mind "Rest" ofcourse he was just guiding me to be intentional about my decision even for rest. I just wanted it go unplanned. But I did a few things in my own pace and own way. Happy to read this letter and to cherish life. Just felt grateful for break, for leisure. And it so simply penned but yet so deep. Thanks for writing
In busyness of life we forget to admire life itself and miss out on small but important joys which makes life meaningful. Thanks for sharing this.