All Your Problems Have Solutions: The Little Letter Series: Delights of the Ordinary No. 55 (S2)
The meteors did not hit the earth. We are still in September. And all problems have solutions.
#TheLittleLetters is my new series where I send you tiny letters of little learnings as opposed to long-form essays. They may help you gear back or throttle up but I promise most of them will be positively wise.
“Time drips, heavy, slow…”
― Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959
The equinox has slightly tilted itself. And it is autumn technically.
So I hope you are neatly, warmly tucked in your hovels, gradually decompressing from the kinky compressions of the week. You are also catching silly-mini-delighted winks from your glorious morning window through your sleepy droopy eyes.
And while you are catching your tiny little sunny pockets, I again hope, you haven’t forgotten to give ‘your ordinaries’ a little dusting and a gentle rub. Because, when we fail to wipe away the dustiness from our quotidian life, the danders and the pollens thinly settle down, covering up brilliance.
“No matter how mundane some actions might appear, keep at it long enough and it becomes a contemplative, even meditative act.”
Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.
While closer home I am trying to trudge through knee-deep waters. At least it feels so. Because now my online home - paintmyword.com is up, I have lots to do. Write more to make some furtherance, give my website some wheeling, some shape and see ways to get the word out.
But in the sorry state of my cerebral reasonings all of it looks like a doomsday, a catastrophe in hiding, a cloud of chaos steaming up in summer heat- “I should just give up,” “This is difficult,” or “This seems like going nowhere!”
These thoughts are not extraterrestrial as one might assume. They are constantly felt by all of us when problems soon turn tragedies and inconveniences, emrgencies. Hersch Wilsons, a volunteer firefighter for 30 years, also a writer, gives an untangled view of life’s ordinary problems. He describes tragedy, problems, and inconveniences as three distinct forms of issues.
A tragedy or emergency is a when we have life or death, health, or natural disaster looming upon us.
A problem is a difficult situation which in majority of cases comes with solutions.
An inconvenience is simply an annoyance that has the potential to disturb our subtle comforts.
Thank heavens, we do not have tragedies falling over us night and day, until, -and God forbids- we are stuck between two fighting nations! Till then, 90% of time it is a problem or just an inconvenience.
Yet the adage is that the power of human existence is tremendous and in surging moments or existential crisis it does becomes mighty monumental.
Thence,… firstly, dust yourself, put your hands up high on your waist, look in the eyes of the problem and with one hand drop your victim story like an old dirty ‘kerchief in the trash! Take a deep breath and think through. Whether your crisis is a tragedy- an emergiency. Or they are problems of daily ordinaries, or simply put, just inconveniences.
Second, manage your mind conversations. Mind conversations thoroughly are self-talks; the stories we tell our selves and blow them out of proportions in our heads. “Being stuck in traffic, missing a flight are simply inconveniences — bumps in the road — not tragedies.” “A cardiac arrest and a daughter not getting on the soccer team. A family losing their home to a fire and our hot water heater going on the fritz.”
Until we are not converting our ordinary difficulties and inconveniences into tragic emergencies in our minds we are doing good. Because, let’s face it, we all will come under the heat and the smoke - the difficult conditions, difficult people, leaking faucet, irritating neighbours, nothing to wear, flat tyre… and you may add more. I am sure you will have plenty to add. :)
Thanks to our tiny short life that still have longer days and tons of hope and a window which filters the autumn sunshine.
And the meteors did not hit the earth. We are still in September. And all problems have solutions and inconveniences a way out!
In the end:
Leaving you with words of singer and song writer Nick Cave, when someone wrote to him that, “God and I have always been very tight; even in hard times when I’ve been furious at God, God now feels absent…”
Here is the excerpt from what Nick’s wrote back to the questioner -
“Dear LFMOFG,
A well-known couplet from Leonard Cohen’s song, Anthem, goes, ‘There is a crack, a crack in everything/ That’s how the light gets in.’ These words had always sounded like a platitude and a little corny to me, but a long, dark journey made me better understand their radical and unsettling nature – that God is often most acutely found in His absence…
Understandably, you feel heartbroken about the world – it can feel like a ruthless place, vindictive, and sometimes it seems personal. But I have realised that it is a moral error to compulsively fixate on the world’s troubles, to elevate ‘the crack in everything’ and not acknowledge ‘the light getting in.’ Our pleasures and joys are not a negation of humanity’s suffering, a betrayal of those we have lost, or the denial of our various griefs. They are the bright, necessary, God-filled articulations of our humanness. We humans are our own howling voids – cracked and beautiful things pierced by light. Faith is not something we find, it is bestowed upon us as a consolatory gift. LFMOFG, there is no need to find your way back. You are already there. Love, Nick”
Thanks for reading. Till my next letter to you may your coffee be strong and all your problems weaker.
- Anugrah
Delights of the Ordinary is 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, science, and philosophy with our practical 9-5 job space.
Who am I?
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 and love for life. My newsletter intersects culture, art, and inner health in our practical 9-5 job space. Feel free to share. You can know more about me here and here.
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 :)
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 The Antidote for Self-Doubt, We Imagine Because We Are Living or read about Decision Fatigue and Our Creative Life.
If you ever feel like dropping in a message or a comment, do not hesitate. We all can only thrive in people. We can be those ordinary creative beings who can change the world. You and me.
Witty