Lessons from Our Moms + A Welcome Back Post Card : Delights of the Ordinary No. 39 ~Season 2
Welcome to Delights of the Ordinary Season 2 alongside celebrating Mother's Day.
“All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.”
- Jorge Luis Borges
Hi There,
After taking a petite break from my self-assigned work of sending you Delights of the Ordinary newsletters each week, through Substack, I am snailing my way up towards resuming my job again and doing the things I love.
If I massively love to do anything is to deeply think about life nuances and then write about it too!
Other than writing, thinking is such an inaudible-intimate-pensive project. Because You need no one’s permission to think childish or cheap; happy or horrific or whatever stuff you want! No one will ever know your thoughts until you choose to tell or act on them. Till then no one can fathom what is brewing within your core, what sort of lava is bubbling in the crater.
What a freedom it is!
Isn’t it?
We are free to have our willful thoughts - our free will.
And therefore, thinking is intelligence. It is the power that is fathered within us and has all the magnitude to build or break our world. Because thoughts are interactive. They create a ground for us to see ourselves and our world through that very lense.
London based writer and an artist, James Bridle writes, “There are many ways of “doing” intelligence: behaviourally, neurologically, physiologically and socially… Intelligence is not something which exists, but something one does; it is active, interpersonal and generative, and it manifests when we think and act. We have already learned — from the gibbons, gorillas and macaques — that intelligence is relational: it matters how and where you do it, what form your body gives it, and with whom it connects. Intelligence is not something which exists just in the head… Intelligence is one among many ways of being in the world: it is an interface to it; it makes the world manifest.”
What are we “doing” when we do nothing but think? Where are we when we… are together with no one but ourselves?
- Hannah Arendt
Delights of Ordinary Season 2
In the last one year of Delights of the Ordinary, it has been all about uplifting our thinking in ways that may do us good like going back to the ordinary and creative ways of paying attention to life’s nuances, delighting in the sombre simpler ways when the world around is throttling jet-speed and vroom-ing itself leaving the meaningful basics of life.
Now this year through ‘Delights of the Ordinary Season 2’ letters, I wish not to merely sculpt the space for restful respites but also to find ways of having bright, imaginative thoughtful perspectives of wonderment. Not an illusion but a wonderment!
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
Okay - enough of self-rambling stuff.
On the topic of Mothers:
My mother was this unconventional, prayerful, practical working woman who was enormously mature with deep love in her eyes but seldom in her words. I guess the sort of ‘soft parenting’ done today was an unbaptized, unknown arena in the ’80s and 90’s when we were growing up.
Hence, in those days she always looked like the one who had all the solutions to all my silly yet heartbreaking problems. But as I was adulting I began to catch her helplessness towards many things in life.
“One of the hardest realizations in life, and one of the most liberating, is that our mothers are neither saints nor saviors — they are just people who, however messy or painful our childhood may have been, and however complicated the adult relationship, have loved us the best way they knew how, with the cards they were dealt and the tools they had.” That’s why it is like a work of a lifetime to accept our moms as soulful, complex human beings who made every effort to love us as pristinely as they could with their flaws and made every effort to become our heroes amidst the backdrop of many villains that life had to offer.
For my mother and the mothers of my friends, this remained common, that these women went through exceptionally rough stretches in life, had to bear with much more difficult circumstances than what we are dealing today and had to make difficult choices in the most difficult times. With this renewed awe, respect and acceptance I have her life lessons to share instead of her recipe or her beauty regimen to mimic.
(The first 3 lessons are from my mother and the other two are from friends who have lost their mothers like me.)
Life will show up in the most unpleasant ways when you never asked for it or anticipated it coming your way. And then you will also not be given many choices to work with. Eventually, we have to deal with whatever comes our way. Hence, be prepared, at least mentally, so it will not shock you enough leaving you limp.
Be grateful for the life you have got. If you are pouting that your life is unfair look towards people who are down on the ladder, are poor and are struggling. Incredibly unfair things happen to incredibly fair people. So, Be grateful. But if you have to learn life look up to those who have overcome their challenges. You can count your blessings and you will know that things are far better than you imagined.
Finally, you have to make difficult choices in the most difficult times and when you do that do not regret it because you did your best then. It is better to move on once you learn your lesson from it. To heal well is to make way to accept what has happened and there is always a way out. Victimhood never serves us for betterment. My mom was a harsh encourager. She was okay with failures but she never allowed us to stop making advancements and moving ahead.
From my dear friend who lost her mother recently: She says, ‘her mother faced all the brutality of life with patience.’ Somehow a deep sense of patience that leads you to a kind of hope that makes you resilient to your suffering. You somehow get this immense power to fight back by standing on your own grounds. Patience is what kept her mother’s self-worth intact amidst the most difficult time her mother went through.
Another friend who lost her mom because of cancer many moons ago, when she and her mother could still make some more memories. Her mom was a synonym to today’s movement of women's power in her own right - in the middle of the era when men ruled every likes and dislikes of their women. Amidst all of this she was a gritty steel lady on the outside furnished with the warmest heart inside. “Never give up. Move ahead and always start your day with a prayer in your heart” she used to tell her. Never a flimsy kind of a woman, neither in her looks nor in her spirit even when fighting cancer she smiled till the end.
Happy Mother’s Day!
And here are my fave internet finds from the week after wandering across the web:
To Watch: Animator and Illustrator Jenny Wright made this brilliant short film ‘My Mother’s Eyes’ after her mother died while she was still in between her university. Later this also became her graduation thesis.
Treat Your Mother- To Cook: The Washington Post says, “No two moms are alike, so naturally that individuality should be reflected in your Mother’s Day festivities. Maybe the mom you’re celebrating is like mine and wants to spend the day working in the garden and end it with a spicy stir-fry. Or perhaps your mom would prefer to relax at the spa and savor a luxurious steak dinner.” To celebrate their uniqueness and tailor-make your treat for her this article from The Washington Post will sprinkle you with some ideas along with the recipes. To get ideas click on the link here. (The Washington Post).
To end:
Time to be the Fine Line of Light by Carrie Fountain
between the blind and the sill, nothing
really. There are so many things
that destroy. To think solely of them
is as foolish and expedient as not
thinking of them at all. All I want
is to be the river though I return
again and again to the clouds.
All I want is to stop beginning sentences
with All I want. No—no really all
I want is this morning: my daughter
and my son saying “Da!” back and forth
over breakfast, cracking each other up
while eating peanut butter toast
and raspberries, making a place for
the two of them I will, eventually,
no longer be allowed to enter. Time to be
the fine line. Time to practice being
the line. And then maybe the darkness.
You may have a gliding glittering weekend, with lots of cool summer drinks around, chitchatting with your mom in the centre and your family around.
Love,
Anugrah
She never outgrows the burden of love, and to the end she carries the weight of hope for those she bore. Oddly, very oddly, she is forever surprised and even faintly wronged that her sons and daughters are just people, for many mothers hope and half expect that their newborn child will make the world better, will somehow be a redeemer.
- Florida Scott-Maxwell
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 Fomo, Jomo, Wagmi And Why We Need Them in Our Lives, To The Ordinary Woman or read about The Art of Walking.
If your heart desires to send me suggestions or topics that you would wish to read about, don’t hesitate to write back. I am a regular woman writing from some corner of our world who has the desire to be heard and hear others too.
Season 2...with a bang!
Enthralling!!
Heartwarming and nostalgic