Whenever I am on a long ride — especially alone — I tend to think a lot. Not in the sense of overthinking, but of being reflective about things that I don’t often look into. They include my choices — how they led me here and where they would lead me in the future.
I write a lot, too. On Sonder and Being Kind is one such example. What you’re reading now is also being written on a train ride. Like writing a diary, I have no idea how it will turn out. Some random thoughts here and there, probably.
Let's see how it goes.
I
Last night, I had an evening walk-and-talk with a friend. Let’s call her Slothy🦥.
At one point, I told Slothy it was a blessing that all of us ended up living together. A series of choices and events led us here. That we could have conversations like this every few nights is something to be grateful for.
I brought up the transient nature of human relationships. In simpler words, fate comes and goes. A relationship brought together by fate could come to an end quickly. But some could last for a long time. Maybe years. Maybe a lifetime.
I’m not sure how long our fate — the encounter it brought about — will last. But while it still does, I’m glad it happened.
II
To some extent, I’m worried about heading home.
As mentioned in When Stuck, Read, I fear my childhood home as a cage of comfort. A cage because of the lower connectivity between home, libraries, and parks when compared to living near the university. “Of comfort” because — for many years — the house has been registered in my mind as a comfort zone. A zone with a high tendency to be a potato. Stay home for a long time and my perspectives towards many things become narrow. That’s how lockdowns break some of us, remember?
In the past, I would go for a swim and hit the library after taking Mother to work in her car. If I didn’t do that, I would be stuck at home all day alone — the perfect condition to waste time away.
That’s why I’ve just messaged Mother that I will be following her drive to work tomorrow. To the library or somewhere outside where I can work.
It’s a form of self-binding — a self-restriction put in place in advance so it is harder for me to justify my way out tomorrow morning.
Why?
Mother once said that I lack self-discipline because I can’t do work at home alone. As a little protest here, accepting that it is harder to make home conducive to work and putting self-bindings in place by working away from home is self-discipline. Take that, mom.
And because of this, I must practice what I preached by actually going outside tomorrow. Otherwise, my credibility would drop and I’m just going to get another “I told you so”.
III
I wrote before that the world is beautifully huge. It’s really easy to forget that as you get too enveloped in the flow of events, the environment you are in, and the people you are with.
Tunnel visions. Thinking about life on a minuscule scale encourages you to enjoy the journey and take things one at a time. But not taking any step back to reflect from a larger perspective and you will end up somewhere you don’t want to be.
If you value the wrong things, it doesn’t matter how hard you work or how productive you are, you’re going to end up in the wrong place.
Being on a train ride often makes me think on a huge time scale. Because I’m traveling, my environment is ever-changing and so are my perspectives towards things. I tend to get disengaged from the physical present and look at life as a whole.
What do I want?
Where do I want to be?
Am I getting there? Why not?
How am I feeling? What is troubling me?
Oftentimes, I would end up remembering that someday, someone I love will die and that many things don’t matter as much as I think. While it may appear to be nihilistic or irresponsible, I beg to differ.
To appreciate living in the present, one must look backward to connect the dots and forward to embrace life in its entirety.
With that, even a long train ride alone can be beautiful, too.
—Thomas🦙
🏆 Weekly Gold
Each week, I share something I found interesting with you. It could be a song, a book, a quote, or a video that blew my mind. Here’s the gold this week 👇
Picked up Ego Is The Enemy by Ryan Holiday. Came across this on the first page.
It reminds me of the line “they have it easy” when referring to “successful” people — that they must have faced fewer challenges along the way.
But it is often a misconception that I fall into. Because we are not them, we could never know and experience exactly what they have been through.
Neither can they know and experience ours.
Other credits:
Cover photo by Masaaki Komori on Unsplash