Homecoming: For Our Delights of All Things Ordinary
I‘ll see you more in this month when flowers bloom and clouds fly to give way to sunny summers and winter snow melts to let the new sprouts.
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 sometimes intersects culture, art, and philosophy with our practical 9-5 job space.
As time holds and unholds my hand, and each year I try to grasp the length of life, I so adamantly hope that it will be all right in the end. Till then it is sufficient for me to know that it is a reality that I cannot shake. Time will move and so will we and we will get old and also the world will be.
- Anugrah
Isn’t it pretty dubious when someone suddenly vanishes from the scene without even uttering a word for a reason? Without smiling, without sulking or simply waving at the least, a mediocre buh-bye! Ghosting you out as they do in some nefarious dating apps.
By the way, this has nothing to do with you. It is me.
And I am Sorry!
Okay - why did I ghost you out like some confused teenager?
Well to start with: My winter break turned into a lengthy one, stretching into 2025. I journeyed to my home town. Came back to the commonnesses of chaotic chores- to falling sick- to starting with antibiotics- then getting a harsh reaction to some antibiotic called Livofloxcin (that messed up with my stomach and nervous system)- to abruptly stop it and redo another round of antibiotics. Phew!
The piercing, gurgling stomach aches as the side-effects, to unable to eat well, think well and an exhausted mind and spirit to write well!
Because be it stomach ache or life aches - nothing is painless. For most of it, we have to persevere in it, holding our head above the waters until we start to swim again.
Hence, one of the biggest reasons for not slipping into once-a-week was this: I severely lacked the vivaciousness to lift my downcast spirit to write. Since my newsletters are not merely straightforward financial education or stock market realizations but about the things of ordinary delights!
I was unsure how to continue my newsletter with its authenticity and honesty when actually, all I felt was… less and slow. “Like most days when you are alone and waiting for something [the] day seemed about a hundred hours long…plenty to think of, of course, but sitting alone, just thinking is pretty slow.” And in our real lives so much of our perceived world slips right by in front of our eyes and honestly we sometimes have to just sit and see it going through.
It was enormously discouraging to see life not progressing as I predicted.
Yet things, situations, circumstances and even people take time to get better. They may take some really long months or years to get to a balance. But they will get there. The present condition of your heart and even your body is not a permanent place to be. It is a place to grow out from.
So, here I am finding you again.
If you have not left this space then a mega Thank You! I hope you missed just a pinch of how much I missed writing to you and felt the tiny-miny void in your inbox.
Therefore, when I share with you my minor miseries, it is a way to pick up the portions from where I left off, to show up again; to mend my vulnerable spirit with enough hope that life will have pitfalls, and all of this is inevitably connected with being a human in our world.
And through these ordinary letters, I wish to nourish the humanness in the world which is exploding day and night. Sharing the sentiments of Krista Tippet who once wrote, “There will be a beyond of this war and its geologic layers of crisis and trauma. My aspiration was to play a (very small, very quiet) part in nourishing some of those human beings who will be there for each other, and be there in service of a peaceful future, in that now unimaginable beyond.”
Life is so beautiful as long as I am creating it! So painful when it is a given that must be endured. Live, act, be wholeheartedly!
- Simone de Beauvoir
And now to some fluff of sharing.
What I learned in 2024!
My sluggishness taught me that you can’t be held in time. Your unpunctualness will be of no use to others. Still, I am sharing with you my last year’s learnings because in some parallel universe, I choose to believe that my learnings may still be a sound reminder even though we have covered three months already.
Here are some of my belated insights:
You will always find a way forward if you really want something.You will never get younger. So live now with the spunk God gave you.To see miracles in our ordinary life is an art.To count my blessings and to number my days.Trying to find joy in little things because challenges will come when we are least prepared.We suffer in our minds more than we suffer in reality. (I wrote this in one of my newsletters)Finally, lol (laugh out loud) as much as possible. :D
For quote: “But human beings do not perceive things whole; we are not gods but wounded creatures, cracked lenses, capable only of fractured perceptions. Partial beings, in all the senses of that phrase. Meaning is a shaky edifice we build out of scraps, dogmas, childhood injuries, newspaper articles, chance remarks, old films, small victories, people hated, people loved; perhaps it is because our sense of what is the case is constructed from such inadequate materials that we defend it so fiercely, even to the death." - Salman Rushdie
To end: In April by James Hearst
This I saw on an April day:
Warm rain spilt from a sun-lined cloud,
A sky-flung wave of gold at evening,
And a cock pheasant treading a dusty path
Shy and proud.
And this I found in an April field:
A new white calf in the sun at noon,
A flash of blue in a cool moss bank,
And tips of tulips promising flowers
To a blue-winged loon.
And this I tried to understand
As I scrubbed the rust from my brightening plow:
The movement of seed in furrowed earth,
And a blackbird whistling sweet and clear
From a green-sprayed bough.I‘ll see you more in this month when flowers bloom and winter solicit is getting over for most of you. When clouds fly away to give way to sunny summers, melting winter snow lets the grass sprout again. I will see you then.
May this April be yours with many blushes, a happy heart and great health.
- Anugrah
Note: To you who have been my diligent reader, I am highly grateful for the time and room that you give me in your heart. For in some way or another letting me know that you are echoing along. If you know even one person who will benefit from reading Delights of the Ordinary then feel free to share it with them.
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.
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.