Calling Strangers My Friend: TheLittleLetter Series: Delights of the Ordinary No. 50 (S2)
Keep smiling at the same stranger. Keep walking the same roads.
#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.
Hello there!
In my serenity, I realized Delights of the Ordinary was slowly becoming a place of information rather than connection. And when things start to become blocky and chalky they lose the smoothness and fluidity they ought to carry. Hence these little letters - came into existence. The Little Letters series is a part of Delights of the Ordinary, where I will send you tiny letters of positive vibes, simple reminders and maybe some chit-chats. But they will be small.
The original Delights of the Ordinary won’t change in shape and size. Some weeks you will find The Little Letters series and other days the original full-blown version of extra servings of reading.
I am trying to do what I know to do - writing; and with it to shine some teeny weeny light here each week and maybe point you towards some good things.
I also hope that you are here to join hands and voices on things that are not just squeezed into our 9-5 jobs, but to life beyond, which is more precious and wider.
Let’s dive in.
It may take years for us to get comfortable to share who we are. Because the strangeness of people, places and things is pretty uncomfortable.
And the antidote to such awkwardness is familiarity, also defined as ‘ to know something or someone well.’ Familiarity is when you keep showing your presence day after day. You keep going to that one place, keep visiting the same cafe, call or visit the same shop for coconut water :), and keep saying hi to the same people.
Keep smiling at the same stranger.
Keep walking the same roads.
Keep doing the same stuff and you will be familiar with the world that is squeezed within those streets. And with time we naturally grow to know each other by sight as Haruki Murakami puts it, slowly becoming friends with the ones who were once strangers.
I suppose it is pretty easy if we grasp it right. The familiar is such a hopeless hope that in the industrious way of things you will never see hope in any of the standard ordinary ways - in the derelict cemented building that has been bathing in sunshine and rain for ages, in the ancient tree that has stood silently across your lane, in the same alleyway of your workspace and the same faces we have seen over and over again. All is so familiar that we halt to light spark of any sort of wonder in them.
Yet familiarity is a blessing. Even if you don’t want there will be something amusing in the ordinary. That is the wonder of being familiar with new and old spaces and new and old faces.
The ordinary actually is a repetition of stuff done day after day. This repetition fine-tunes our routines, creating many more easy joys in between. A beam of a smile, a kind nod to silently say good day, a side peep, or share a morsel with a dog that always sleeps down the street.
You just be there getting familiar and helping others to be familiar to you.
Just anoint your places as you know.
Hang into the same ordinary with the same ordinary strangers.
And that’s how we call strangers our friends.
“When we are sad - at least I am like this - it can be comforting to cling to familiar objects, to the things that don’t change.”
- Donna Tartt
Wishing you a week of non-fuss days and new strangers becoming your friends. Keep shining your good light because the world can become quite dark sometimes.
Till we meet next week.
- Anugrah
- The Little Letters Series.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.