My Fingerprint is Different than Yours: Delights of the Ordinary No. 28

Our Next 12 months can be the game changer.

In the stream of daily life, we’re pushed and pulled in a million different directions. And if we don’t extract ourselves and find time for recollection, we won’t be able to listen to our lives, to listen to others, and to understand the way that our relationships and our desires are growing and emerging. We’ll be surprised if five or ten years from now, we’ve pursued desires that have led us to a place that we really may not have wanted to go. Listening is critical to the transformation.

- Big Think

Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash

When I write to you here, I wish to see life as a place of movement in its mild sways. In our gaudy-hyperbolic speed-obsessed life, with Delights of Ordinary, I wish to find you! You who also somewhere sincerely strive to make positive edits to your story. So, coming here each week is just a simple way to talk to you about some pertinent things and some topics that have the capacity to bring the new birthing inside of us!

And this is a New Year - a new 2024, which soon will start ageing like most of us! But till the time it remains as fresh as a morning dew, unscathed by the glaring and maddening shouts of the ‘do-or-die’ situation, we somehow can carve the space to maintain some composure and bring a little halt in our being.

As much as it is possible!

Because we can earn a lot of money, have a lot of comforts and a lot of collectables, yet, it is the warming smile of your child, a kind cup of tea, the chance to freely pile your feet on to the table, a clean sheet on the bed and crumbling onto it at the end of our day that remain eternally yours.

These non-tangible collectables are more everlasting than those which are seen. Isn’t it? Yet we are running the treadmill-kinda-run to pursue the wants that are fleeting. Not that we don’t need the material landscape to live a comfortable life. Still, the horror lies in the fact that it has consumed all of who we are and the way we now direct our wants and desires.

But do we even know what we really want?

Though it may not be true for everyone, as a 4-year-old I was completely gaga over one of my Kindergarten school teachers. She was delicately thin with an elevated straight walk. Her smile was easy on the eyes and her big voluminous 80’s curls swept her shoulders lazily. But all along it was her tall straight walk in her pencil-thin heels that kept my puerile desires busy as a child. On returning home each day, I used to imitate her walk, in whatever- rickety-4-year-old stylized way and dreamt of having those curls and her gait one day.

(To tell you in my hush tone I still desire those traits because I have none!)

Imitation is such a basic mechanism of learning and kids imitate because not just our neural structure promotes imitation very proficiently but as children, we may not know what we want from the world, hence we learn from people around us. And that inherent imitation follows us even in our adulthood.

French Anthropologist René Girard (1923–2015) studied human behaviour and culture and named this behaviour ‘mimetic desire.’ “Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires.,” says Girard.

And that is why we may be doing what we don't like to do, working towards aspirations that give us no lasting joy. And then to shoddily fill up, let ourselves doom-scroll the internet which is taking over our brains with turbojet speed and changing it forever. We as a generation are more than exposed to wanting things which we never ever wanted. We may not really know what we want in the first place.

Haven’t we all participated in the “I’ll take what’s on their table” situation? Not sure what you want you will either say, “I am fine with anything,” or you’ll order the similar wine and basil pesto fettuccine served on the adjacent table. Take the course that my friend took, choose the same holiday destinations. This mimicking happens because we imitate the desires of others.

Thin versus Thick Desires

Professor and author Luke Burgis calls our innate mimicking desires as Thin Desires. He says, "Thin desires are highly mimetic, fleeting, ephemeral—the kind of wants that leave us unfulfilled in the end because they were adopted from other people."

Across the spectrum stands Thick Desires, which are the things we genuinely want but they are hidden. Burgis explains, “Thick desires… endure beyond the ebb and flow of modern life. Thin desires are like a layer of sand over a slate of solid rock below. The rock represents thick desires.”

So how do you find out how thick or thin your desires are?

Your thick desires may not conform to the patterns of the world - they might look implausible and absurd to speak about yet if you can get courageous enough to remove the gritty sand and pebbles from atop they will spurt forth your brilliance from within. Take time to discover your thick desires and do not fear to pursue them!

Progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.

-C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity.

Your Fingerprint, Not Mine!

What we are setting out in the world, is to bring uniqueness and resist the urge to mimic things we see around us. Mimicking is a dangerous zone that looks profusely safe to the eyes, but is not! In most cases when we desire to keep up with the world’s accord - like to have a house or a car by a particular age because we are looking at others who got it before us and their life seemed darn good, we are forced to change our originality. While in deeper space there may be an undercurrent so distinct from others that make us simply unique. And the sooner we realize the better success we can have. We celebrate our own fingerprints because they will never be the same as any other!

Photo by Khamkéo Vilaysing on Unsplash

But it is a journey…

And we ought to keep it like that. Not all of us are clear in our desires from the start. But when we know that we can attain our thick desires then at least we can work for it. And at least we can hope to excavate them. When we touch smell and taste things. Sometimes things grow onto us. Sometimes we feel we want those things but we realise later we never wanted them. I guess till the time you don’t figure out what you may really want, it is absolutely wise to keep doing what you are doing. Sometimes we are stuck at a crossroads where we don’t want this but we also don’t know what we want instead of this! What is the replacement? “That’s the primacy of desire. The heart knows things that the mind can’t explain...”

Burgis, in one of his interviews with Forbes, asks to give out some creative clarity. He says, “Can you tell me a story about a time in your life when you put effort into doing something that gave you a deep sense of satisfaction? Something in which you found a deep sense of meaning? Something that brings you joy even to recall? Try to dig up at least 4-5 of these stories from your life. Write them down. Then ask yourself: what specifically was it that was motivating me in each of these cases? What was it that I wanted to achieve? And why is that so important to me?”

Thin desires will change boisterously as the wind changes her direction, yet the thicker ones will dwell with you even when you have lived a whole life matching your success tags with that of the world!

To End:

The Summer Day", by Mary Oliver

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

And so, here’s to making 2024 a thicker year :)

Hold fast and stay true and thick. Cheers.

- Anugrah

Delights of the Ordinary

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Delights of the Ordinary started somewhere in April of twenty-twenty-three with just two readers and now has a readership of 100+ of you. I am highly grateful for the time and room that you give me in your heart.

Delights of the Ordinary is currently 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 read the recent posts 'Tis the Season of Simple Smiles and Simple Joys along with The Fikka, Hygge and Shinrin Yoku of Slowing Down, How to Turn Your Internal Blah-Blah into Creative Reflection or read about Gratitude In Our Ordinaries.

And don’t forget to