It All Grows Together: Delights of the Ordinary

Delights of the Ordinary No. 67. Season 3.

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 is your guide to elevate everyday lives through the lens of virtues and inner character, work culture, creativity, and emotional psychology amidst our practical 9-5 job space.

It all goes together….

We have a hilariously moody weather here in Mumbai. In one quiet hour, the rains start lashing with squalls of stormy winds, and in another hour, we are haunted by the humid sun. Perhaps, up in the sky, are many symphonies: floating clouds shrouding the sun, the dainty dance of falling raindrops and melodious psalms of wheezing winds. And below, on our earth, far from our robotic urban-ness, are many rainforests with aged sky-high deciduous trees and the tiny toadstool fungi called mushrooms. They all living in some superb, harmonious order!

Photo by Florian van Duyn on Unsplash

“Slow down, breathe deep, and look around. What can you hear? What do you see? How do you feel?”
- Peter Wohlleben

Peter Wohlleben is a German forest scientist and author of many forest books, including his New York Times bestseller The Hidden Life of Trees. He studies and teaches about forests and their plant kingdom. While he was studying and learning about trees in forests, he saw that trees can talk in their own quirky language, which you and me have not yet deciphered! They all live in a robust, intuitive community and do not hesitate to help each other out.

Furthermore, Peter also found that trees can count! “They wait until a certain number of warm days have passed, and only then do they trust that all is well and classify the warm phase as spring… warm days alone do not mean spring has arrived.”

And here we are, absorbed in creating artificial intelligence in some meta verse, designing their cleverness on our own, only to discover they are predatory and preying just like us.

Photo by ran liwen on Unsplash

And what would happen if you isolate tress and plants?

“Perhaps the saddest plants of all are those we have enslaved in our agricultural systems. They appear to have lost the ability to communicate and are isolated by their silence.” And “[i]t seems trees need their rest just as much as we do, and sleep deprivation is as detrimental to trees as it is to us.”

Humans, just like trees, also yearn to reach into sunlight, waiting for our myceliums to spread wider and deeper. Longing to feel the wind, making every effort to interlace our roots with others, so we, at the very least, will have the purpose to produce good fruits along with our tribe.

From some distance, every community, every tribe, every family and every human interaction is flawed to its fault. Because, on a closer look, every collective flaw leaps up from explosively flawed men and women like you and me!

All we have to do is accept the messiness of our flawed world.

We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.

- Dorothy Day

However, in answer to our flaws, we have given ourselves all the tools to snip away from each other. We no longer let our elbows rub against one another. We, perhaps, are like the saddest plants that have lost the ability to communicate, isolated by our silence, enslaved in an algorithm-infused space as our shelter, looking for shortcuts to impress our brains!

The truth is that, “For 99% of human evolutionary existence, we lived in communities of 20-30 people who worked together, shared meals, and existed deeply connected to one another. We are designed for tribal living, yet modern life has separated us in ways we barely recognise. Despite our technological innovation, we remain surprisingly traditional in how we structure our living arrangements. We create millions of apps yearly but rarely reimagine how people might actually live together,” writes The School of Life London.

And “[p]erhaps if we lived like trees in a forest, we would see how life rearranges and transforms again and again and again. Eventually, we would realise that inherent in the act of loving one thing is a love for all things.” And, “[w]ho would we be if our “artificial” intelligence turned natural, built on the nonbinary logic of symbiosis, restoring the unity of life into a perfect circle with no sides to take?”

Think it over! :)

The final word is love… To love we must know each other … and we know each other in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone any more. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is companionship.

- Dorothy Day

To End:

For Keeps by Joy Harjo

I lean into the rhythm of your heart to see where it will take us.
We gallop into a warm, southern wind.
I link my legs to yours and we ride together,
Toward the ancient encampment of our relatives.
Where have you been? they ask.
And what has taken you so long?
That night after eating, singing, and dancing
We lay together under the stars.
We know ourselves to be part of mystery.
It is unspeakable.
It is everlasting.
It is for keeps.

Until my next letter,

May showers of rain sprout new lilies in your backyard, and your living room be filled with lots of laughter and strong connections.

- Anugrah

Delights of the Ordinary

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Who am I?

Hi, I am Anugrah. I write different series on 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. 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.

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