Margins are Good : #TheLittleLetter Series: Delights of the Ordinary No. 48 (S2)
These are The #LittleLetters Series
#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.
(Listen to the embedded audio or read the transcript below.)
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.
Have you ever watched a pirated version of a movie? The ones with extremely low-quality prints, blurry lines and margins, with no distinct audio, that watching them feels like suffering for no reason.
It is because they are copied from the screen projection of a movie in a cinema, by cams of low quality that everything appears fuzzy and hazy; lacking clearly defined lines and margins.
And this ‘marginless faultiness’ makes these movies more trash than good.
In our probity we all desire margins. We desire proper lines and symmetry in the way we sense things in our world.
In our practical lives margin, as Michael Hyatt puts it, “is the gap between rest and exhaustion, the space between breathing freely and suffocating.”
These margins are good.
Good work ethics have margins - a work culture, where we pause in between. We wait before we start another project. We pause between weeks. We pause between changing years.
Some of our good days have margins. They have lines drawn, maybe semi-permeable but they do. When days have margins we make some space to stop, to attend to simple things of life before we move onto the complex ones.
Good relationships have margins. In a way that honours our space, they wait and they attend to plain things like mending clothes and mending hearts.
These margins are good.
And we make margins and boundaries in how we organise our lives but not in our hearts! Because that would be awful of sorts and not something as pleasant as it should be.
Hence, in our small puny world, which is dusted with so much ordinariness, don’t be enticed to fit everything in your one day. That would be like watching a blurry knockoff version of a movie with no clear bright margins - exhausting and suffocating.
Margins are good.
They are yours.
You can draw them for the good of you and others.
Keep up the light glowing inside of you. Till we meet next…
- Anugrah
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.
Short and sweet. Meaningful reminder...
I love these short series and new artwork!