How to let the Sun Shine In You : Delights of the Ordinary No.40 (S2)

we draw long thick curtains over this sunny side of the window that even if light wishes to penetrate it can’t. It is not the fault of your light. It is how you have trained to see things.

“I think there is more going on than we can see or understand, and we need to find a way to lean into the mystery of things – the impossibility of things – and recognise the evident value in doing that, and summon the courage it requires to not always shrink back into the known mind.”

―Nick Cave, Faith, Hope and Carnage

Photo by Hoang Huy on Unsplash

Our world- even with its refined sophisticated order of spinning on its axis around the radiant sun will someday be engulfed by the sun itself!

The NASA scientists say so.

“Like all stars, our Sun will eventually run out of energy. When it starts to die, the Sun will expand into a red giant star, becoming so large that it will engulf Mercury and Venus, and possibly Earth as well. Scientists predict the Sun is a little less than halfway through its lifetime and will last another 5 billion years or so before it becomes a white dwarf.”

In contrast to these seemingly endless five billion years of earth, each of us has much less than 100 years to live. We get to do limited things, in limited time, in our limited body, in our somehow limited world which is so ephemeral and altering in itself.

Frankly! We are so finite!

Yet in the thick of this finite limiting outer world, we have a boundless infinite inner substance that is making every effort to keep finding its way to shine through us.

“There is a quiet light that shines in every heart. It draws no attention to itself, though it is always secretly there. It is what illuminates our minds to see beauty, our desire to seek possibility, and our hearts to love life. Without this subtle quickening our days would be empty and wearisome, and no horizon would ever awaken our longing. Our passion for life is quietly sustained from somewhere in us that is wedded to the energy and excitement of life. This shy inner light is what enables us to recognize and receive our very presence here as blessing.”

- John O’Donohue

But the tragedy is in this- we draw long thick curtains over this sunny side of the window that even if light wishes to penetrate it can’t. It is not the fault of your light. It is how you have trained yourself to see things through another dim window. We easily become flatly dull; uninspired; easily give up; dropping our knees too soon, too early!

Photo by Lynn Li on Unsplash

The Fierce Sun In Each One of Us!

All of us are immanently imprinted with wild-wild fierce possibilities within us. The outer world always will remain at odds with this inner self. How we live in our thoughts is how we live in our lives and eventually, that is how we become!!

Maria Popova says, “Who we become depends on how we tend to our inner garden — what qualities of character and spirit we cultivate to come abloom, what follies we weed out, how much courage we grow to turn away from the root-rot of cynicism and toward the sunshine of life in all its forms: wonder, kindness, openhearted vulnerability.”

Contemporary musician and writer, Nick Edward Cave, is obsessed with dealing with this inner-self, greatly after the death of his son, Arthur (15) who fell from a cliff near Brighton, England and died from his injuries on 14 July 2015.

In Nick’s case, he let his brokenness become a portal to find deeper meaning in his life and his contemplation stands tall like a lighthouse for many who may be in the pits of their sorrow.

Nick speaks of the two virtues for a meaningful life, that may loosen the tightness from the tenderness of the life, that can soften the sometimes stiff, unbent world system. He says,

1. “The first is humility. Humility amounts to an understanding that the world is not divided into good and bad people, but rather it is made up of all manner of individuals, each broken in their own way, each caught up in the common human struggle and each having the capacity to do both terrible and beautiful things. If we truly comprehend and acknowledge that we are all imperfect creatures, we find that we become more tolerant and accepting of others’ shortcomings and the world appears less dissonant, less isolating, less threatening.”

2. “The other quality is curiosity. If we look with curiosity at people who do not share our values, they become interesting rather than threatening. As I’ve grown older I’ve learnt that the world and the people in it are surprisingly interesting, and that the more you look and listen, the more interesting they become. Cultivating a questioning mind, of which conversation is the chief instrument, enriches our relationship with the world. Having a conversation with someone I may disagree with is, I have come to find, a great, life embracing pleasure.”

“To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”

- E. E. Cummings

Now to the links of the week:

To Lexicon: Greedflation: This is the word that was in the list of ‘Word of the Year 2023.’

It means the use of inflation as an excuse to raise prices to artificially high levels in order to increase corporate profits. Forbes says, “that businesses were hiking prices purely because they could, at the expense of consumers. This scenario was initially dismissed—even criticized as a “conspiracy theory.” But the notion of greedflation hasn’t gone away and remains a topic of concern and debate.”

To Watch: This video named ‘Failing Upwards’ brings me some sort of relief, since everything in our general life has the pressure of being successful with meta-perfectionism. “There is a deep-rooted belief in our culture that success means never failing… Of course, that is nonsense.” says Amy Edmondson a professor at Harvard Business School who studied failure and shows that - It doesn’t matter if you fail. It matters *how* you fail- in this video.

The Quote to live by: “Let yourself really fail once in a while – not some tiny little mistakes here and there, but big, glaring, confidence-shaking, dark-night-of-the-soul-inducing failures. Understand that no one simply coasts from achievement to achievement. The most accomplished people in the world fail and fail big. That’s how they learn so much, grow so quickly, and become so interesting and wise.” - Michelle Obama

To End:

Allium by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

While I did not fix
the thing I most
wish to fix, and I
did not do
the most important
thing on my list,
and I did not save
anyone, and I did
not solve the world’s
problems, I did
plant the onion sets
in the garden,
pressed my fingers
into the dry earth,
knew myself as
a thin dry start.
Oh patience, good
self. This slow
and quiet growing,
this, too, is
what you are
here to do.

May the amberness of the sun glow in your heart, and carry the light to ignite the darkest corners around. Stay hydrated and happy, summer is in full swing.

- Anugrah

Delights of the Ordinary

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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

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.

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 Lessons from our Moms, To The Ordinary Woman or read about Decision Fatigue and Our Creative Life.