Ordinary Never are Mundane Ordinary: Delights of the Ordinary No. 34
They are moving and changing and making some goodness around. We all change.
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. This newsletter intersects culture, art and our practical 9-5 job space. If you know even one person who will benefit from reading Delights of the Ordinary, feel free to share so they can subscribe.
You are under no obligation to remain the same person you were a year ago, a month ago, or even a day ago. You are here to create yourself, continuously.
– Richard Feynman
The weather in Mumbai these days is spectacular. To a degree of coolness, that translates into breezy balmy days, along with bursts of warm-wooly sunshine spreading its terracotta-sort of orange everywhere.
The sky is so insanely clear that you can put your finger just where the heaven meets the earth.
And so the other day I was chin-wagging about the weather with my sister o’er the phone when I found that the rest of my family is sniffing and sneezing under the weather and going winter shopping to keep themselves warm.
It was just last year around this time, I was in Delhi and I could have never imagined living my Februaries like cool summers someday! Because, for someone like me who has weaved her entire life in and around vestibules of different seasons since I was born, just to have summers almost all through the year feels utterly ordinary.
Because, I guess, seasons make derivatives of our lives into some form of perceptible change. And change is what we all need to keep up with the grand scheme of things. The big picture of life!
The physical reality of the world as we know it is motion. Motion itself = movement. Change. If there is any repetition it is not identical repetition because (at least) time has passed and therefore there is an element of change.
- Keith Haring
Hence I hope, you will appreciate every season and every change you see in your life. Because, as cliché as it is ‘we can’t stop change.’
The paradox is that as people we want to keep our dwelling pads the same, digging hard in our heels to resist many life changes and flux that disturb us. With all the changes we witness we speedingly slapdash to tidy up things to their old ways, the old setups, what they were or what we were used to.
We restlessly long to bring things and people back to their earliest place. Places where we left them.
The table remains where we left it; the coffee mug maintains the same place; doing things as our parents did; secretly wishing our children never grow up and move away. The struggle is to keep life in its orbit and our heart in its cadence lilt.
Yet, not only the exteriors change, even our interiors change. “As life lives itself through us, our bodies change; the physical places and social spheres we inhabit change; if we are alive enough and courageous enough, our opinions and ideas about life change. And yet we cling to the comforting illusion that we remain, in some unmappable region of being, fundamentally ourselves — our immutable selves.”
“People don’t want to know that they change.
How can we celebrate paradox, let alone manage at all, knowing how scary the future may be — that the baby brother will grow, and ignore you or hurt you or break your heart? Or that we may die, after an unattractive decline, or bomb North Korea later today? So while trusting… we do the next right thing… We march, make dinner,… We remember mustard seeds, that the littlest things will have great results. We do the smallest, realest, most human things. We water that which is dry.
- Anne Lamott
So in life what can lead us to bear changes, especially the difficult ones, the ones we can’t control and still have a happy life?
Change has a similar principle to be applied as in any other thing in life. ‘We move as we go and learn to adapt as we move.’ This principle applies to any form of change. Overthinking will kill you, particularly if you are resisting change that is out of your control. Rather, we let go of our biases and learn as we go.
During 1938 - the era of the great depression - scientists began following the health of 268 Harvard sophomores and wanted it to be the longest study of adult life. However, most of the participants of Harvard Study of Adult Development passed away with time and only 19 were left. Among the original participants were President John F. Kennedy. Women weren’t a part of the initial study because during those days the College was still all male and women weren’t allowed to study there. (We have changed as far as it concerns women and their rights!)
Nevertheless, over time, scientists expanded their research to include the offspring of original participants, who are almost 1,300 and are in their 50s and 60s. “Over the years, researchers have studied the participants’ health trajectories and their broader lives, including their triumphs and failures in careers and marriage, and the finding have produced startling lessons...”
Lessons from Harvard Study of Adult Development
Even my acceptance towards change has always been feeble.
Some of the highlights I gathered from this study have tutored my bumbling life circuit and I hope you might find this helpful too:
Life-long changes can be difficult yet, “[t]he people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80.” “[I]t wasn’t their middle-age cholesterol levels that predicted how they were going to grow old,” says Robert Waldinger, one of the directors of this study. “Close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives.”
“Loneliness kills,… “It’s as powerful as smoking or alcoholism.”
“Good relationships don’t just protect our bodies; they protect our brains,…” And good relationships don’t have to be comfortable all the time… Some of their older couples could bicker and quarrel with each other all day long, but as long as they were assured that they could ‘count on the other when the going got tough,’ those quarrels didn’t take a toll on their memories!
People’s personalities are not “set in plaster” as they grow old. They change. For better or worse- is based on the choices we make.
Those who started life doing blunders turned out to be “wonderful octogenarians.” While “alcoholism and major depression could take people who started life as stars and leave them at the end of their lives as train wrecks.”
Having mature mechanisms to cope with life’s ups and downs, and enjoying both a healthy weight and a stable marriage were among the major factors that made happy lives.
“Take care of your body as though you were going to need it for 100 years,’ because you might.”
Ann Lamott wrote, “What comforts us is that, after we make ourselves crazy enough, we can let go inch by inch into just being here; every so often, briefly. There is flow everywhere in nature — glaciers are just rivers that are moving really, really slowly — so how could there not be flow in each of us? Or at least in most of us?”
Our ordinary never are mundane ordinary. It is high-octane. Flambouyant and fiery. In a flux. On the move. Full of changeables kind of get-up-and-go!
What have we to go on? What to cling to? That people may change, that one person can help another. That’s all. Maybe that’s enough.
- Allen Wheelis
Now to our programming, the faves of the week:
To Watch: “If you’re in the mood for something uplifting and heartwarming, you’re in for a treat! Allow… to introduce Sergio Duce, an artist whose charming minimalist illustrations are sure to captivate your imagination.” These 15 minimalist cartoons on our everyday lives will delight your nostalgia because we all will find ourselves in these cartoons. Click here to see Sergio Duce's work.
To Learn: This is very a enlightening video explaining the meaning and difference between Empathy and Sympathy. Empathy fosters connection, while sympathy breeds disconnection.
To End:
Possibly by Lesléa Newman
to wake and find you sitting up in bed
with your black hair and gold skin
leaning against the white wall
a perfect slant of sunlight slashed
across your chest as if God
were Rembrandt or maybe Ingmar Bergman
but luckily it’s too early to go to the movies
and all the museums are closed on Tuesday
anyway I’d rather be here with you
than in New York or possibly Amsterdam
with our eyes and lips and legs and bellies
and the sun as big as a house in the sky
and five minutes left before the world begins
I hope you kindle a much kinder spirit and carry it well into the twilight of the coming week.
- Anugrah
Explore all my previous editions here. And in case you don’t wish to spend time browsing then complement this post with The Knobbly Bits of Friendship, Hold Onto Your Memories or read My Fingerprint is Different than Yours.
Delights of the Ordinary started somewhere in April of twenty-twenty-three with just two readers and now has a readership of 140 of you. I am highly grateful for the time and room that you give me in your heart.
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 :)
And don’t forget to
"The sky is so insanely clear that you can put your fingers just where the heaven meets the earth." Such a magical thought.
Thank you David! Thanks for reading.