I just came back from a short trip to Prague and London. This was not a business trip, but a holiday I’d planned a year ago with childhood friends. Much of it was spent in luxurious hotels and good restaurants.
There was much laughter, conversation and catching up. I enjoyed walking through the Old Town of Prague. My morning strolls in London’s Hyde Park remain engraved on my heart. However, the whole trip seemed too comfortable, relaxed and affluent. True, I came back reinvigorated and ready to face my challenges at work, but there was something missing. The trip was like going to a New Year’s Eve party, where everything is rehearsed, organised and expected.
Many people view a holiday as a time to relax, do nothing and be comfortable. The reality, however, is that the purpose of travel is not our comfort, but rather our discomfort.
When we leave the comfort of home and the warm surroundings it provides us, we come face to face with uncertainty. Suddenly nothing is as you know it. On one hand, it’s exciting, while on the other it’s challenging. There is both novelty and adventure. The mind now works less on automacity and more on creativity.
We have to dig deep to face different and new parts of ourselves when we travel, so that we can discover more about ourselves. Like how we handle a new environment and the pressure it brings, or how we navigate a place without knowing the language.
Travel not only becomes an exploration of the world but also a discovery of ourselves through the world.
In Travels, Michael Crichton, describes this idea;
“Often I feel I go to some distant region of the world to be reminded of who I really am. There is no mystery about why this should be so. Stripped of your ordinary surroundings, your friends, your daily routines, your refrigerator full of your food, your closet full of your clothes — with all this taken away, you are forced into direct experience. Such direct experience inevitably makes you aware of who it is that is having the experience. That’s not always comfortable, but it is always invigorating.”
I’ve promised myself that on my next trip away from home I will saunter through the city, aimlessly experiencing it through my senses, remove myself from the world, put myself into the heart of a city and become one with it, like a true flâneur.
I will make sure to be uncomfortable enough, so that I can experience the city, culture and environment directly. In that way, I would have unearthed new parts of me that were waiting to be revealed.
I’m travelling in a few days. I feel restless, anxious and paralysed. Butterflies are roaming in my stomach as my productivity wanes. I just can’t be present, no matter what I do.
It’s a common theme for me to feel restless before travelling, but this time around the feeling is more intense. That feeling of restlessness has its roots in being overwhelmed after the anxiety-inducing events of the past few weeks.
I’m restructuring my company and as such I had to lay off many loyal members of the team. It wasn’t easy but it was a necessary move, and yet that was only the start of what I need to change within my company. There are still a thousand and one things I need to do and just as I had built up enough steam, the travel date for a trip I couldn’t cancel had arrived.
That sense of overwhelm has also been heightened as I’ve started writing my memoir. Work needs to be done. Deadlines need to be met. As if that weren’t enough, I’m also digging deep into my blog, writing niche and audience with guidance from a specialist coach so as to make my writing reach further and deeper.
As everything is at the starting point, I’ve been swamped with things to do and questions to answer. Everything has been coming at me with breakneck speed.
This reminds me of my words in an earlier post on anxiety:
We human beings have a primitive, built-in system that protects us from perceived threat or harm, be it physical (an impending saber-toothed tiger waiting to attack) or emotional (fear of not doing enough). It’s called the fight or flight response and is activated by an area of our brain known as the hypothalamus, which releases stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol. These stress hormones affect us physiologically: our breathing increases, our heart rate goes up, and we feel a nervous tension. We become more aware of our surroundings, our pupils dilate, our senses get sharper, and we are in fight or flight mode. In survival mode, we default to our primordial, emotional mind and bypass our rational mind, which holds all our positive thoughts, newly formed beliefs, and good habits. Overwhelmed, we lose the ability to relax and become reactive.
Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he’d had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.
I need to slow things down. I don’t need to do everything in a day. Read an hour a day for thirty days and you can finish War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy’s book of 1,225 pages.
Step by step, bird by bird, anything can be achieved.
Søren Kierkegaard said, “One is weary of eating on porcelain and eats on silver; wearying of that, one eats on Gold.”
Often, we invite alternatives in our life not because we want the best option, but only that we’re bored with what we are doing. We are bored, not due to lack of choices but rather because we are not content with ourselves. We feel that we are missing out on something. We compare what we are doing with what others are doing. We compare what we have with what others have. We presume it would give us more joy to do the things that they are doing or have the things that they have.
The reality is never so.
When stripped of our fears—of missing out, not being enough or that the grass is always greener on the other side—we start seeing the actual truth.
What works for others doesn’t necessarily work for us. What we truly want is often a million miles away from what another wants. But first, we must see through the fog of our fears that we have nurtured over many years.
Kierkegaard continues, “The more a person limits himself, the more resourceful he becomes.”
One way of reducing fears is to reduce the number of things, thoughts and decisions we need to make.
Let’s simplify our lives and throw away what we don’t use, need or think we need.
I’m listening to Tim Ferris’s podcast where Neil Gaiman, one of the best fiction writers alive is talking. His voice is hypnotic. It penetrates straight to the emotional mind. It’s not only because of his majestic accent but also the passion he shows when describing writing.
He explains his process in incredible detail. The way he writes his first drafts in long-hand using a fountain pen. After that is complete, he edits the draft while transferring his words onto the computer. He then describes the tools of his craft: the special German notebook—the Leuchtturm1917 and the Italian Visconti fountain pen. Both make him write more effortlessly and efficiently.
He speaks like a man in love with his craft. The passion he declares for writing is intoxicating. I’ve read many of his books with my particular favourite being The Graveyard Book. His words come alive on the page, just like how he awakens when he talks about writing. It’s little wonder that millions read his books.
He ends by simplifying writing to one basic principle:
“You write. That’s the hard bit that nobody sees. You write on the good days, and you write on the lousy days. Like a shark, you have to keep moving forward, or you die. Writing may or may not be your salvation; it might or might not be your destiny. But that does not matter. What matters right now are the words, one after another. Find the next word. Write it down. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.”
I leave the office slightly earlier than usual, and I look forward to my evening swim when the clouds overhead darken. As I prepare to wear my swimming trunks, I notice small drops of rain start to fall. At first, it’s only a drizzle but then the tiny droplets transform into much bigger ones. I quickly pull up my chair, roll up the window blinds and start watching the rain splash down onto the pool, the surrounding tiles and the garden outside.
The rain continues to fall, and I ponder on a recent book I read, the biography of Nietzsche–I Am Dynamite! by Sue Prideaux. For all his genius Nietzsche died not only not having not achieved any of his ambitions, but he also lived the last 11 years of his life in a mental asylum.
Life is truly heartbreaking. Many of us don’t achieve our dreams; we suffer from the day we are born till the day we die. It’s like we start full of love and hope and then slowly life drains away all our love till we end up feeling out of love of ourselves and the world.
Nietzsche through his many illnesses and madness still found the focus and thinking that would go on to inspire generations of thinkers, including Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Herman Hesse, long after his death.
Most of the extraordinary people are very much like us, ordinary for 97% of their lives but the difference is that they become extraordinary for the remaining 3%.
We might struggle with our lives and we may not emulate some of our illustrious heroes, but we all somehow leave our imprints onto the world.
However, all we need to do is intensify our focus and raise our game for some of our living hours—3% of our lives—to etch our names in history. Just like Nietzsche, Freud and Hesse.
I don’t like Mondays. It’s as if my soul leaves my body on Sunday night and only returns on Tuesday morning. Maybe it’s a feeling that I have inherited from my 11-year-old self during my school years, where dread and anxiety took control of me most Monday mornings. Or perhaps it’s the fact that I haven’t been enjoying my work for a long while now and Monday is the first day of non-enjoyment.
For whatever reason, I know that Monday blues are real. However, I’ve learned that not all of them will turn out to be as bad as last Monday. Also, over the years, I’ve learned to manage my Mondays well. I start with a rigorous gym session to fill my system with endorphins. I try not to have any meetings, and finally I try to get at least one difficult task done as soon as I’m in the office. This immediately connects me to the work, and I feel engaged.
And just like that Tuesday arrives, as does my soul.
Driving back home one evening, I listened to a podcast featuring David Sedaris, a famous author, who is very clear about his wants and needs. After his readings, he spends a long time, sometimes up to 6 hours till the early hours of the morning signing books and having conversations with his readers. When asked why he does so, he doesn’t say it’s because he wants to give his fans something for standing in line and buying his books. Instead, he wants their love, acceptance and approval. He explains that it could be some deep void within him that drives his actions, but they are what they are.
I love how honest and refreshing he is, not only to the public but to himself. He doesn’t paint an evangelical picture of himself trying to save mankind as so many other people do, but instead, he is honest enough to say that he does it for himself.
In being so authentic, he ends up serving his community and is universally loved.
My week started on a high as my football team, Man Utd, won a difficult game away to Chelsea. I don’t know what football does to me, but somehow it transports me to my 11-year old self. Winning means that adrenaline starts pumping through my veins, my heart beats faster and that immediately I’m in a great mood. However, when we lose, I’m best avoided for a few hours.
I’ve written a lot about Stoic Principles, especially Marcus Aurelius’ famous quote “You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realise this, and you will find strength.” Nevertheless, when football is involved, I become that petulant child who has no control whatsoever. On Monday evening I was ecstatic, and the good vibes stayed with me until Wednesday when the stress of work, my returning hypoglycemia symptoms and lack of writing took their toll on me, and I found myself in a desperate funk.
I left work early that day, switched off my phone and attempted to write.
I stared at the blank screen of my computer and then fell into the trap of whiling away a few hours on the web. I’ve been stuck on what to write lately. Do I continue blogging? Try a new format that shares some of my weekly experiences (as I’m doing here) and or start working on a book project? And the underlying question I was facing, whether consciously or not, was what is the form of expression that suited me best. I didn’t want to publish with any magazines, newspapers or websites. I didn’t want to use the parachute of the fantastic editor I’d been using. I just wanted to write whatever came from my heart and that which could be edited with my head. Yes, my writing has to be structured and professional enough for the reader to understand my ideas, but it need not win any literary awards. Not yet, anyway!
While reading Nassim Taleb’s first meaningful book Fooled by Randomness, I was encouraged by a paragraph in the introduction;
One final comment on the style. I elected to keep the style of this book as idiosyncratic as it was in the first edition. Homo sum, good and bad. I am fallible and see no reason to hide my minor flaws if they are part of my personality no more than I feel the need to wear a wig when I have my picture taken or borrow someone else’s nose when I show my face. Almost all the book editors who read the draft recommended…I ignored almost all of them and found out that none of the readers thought them necessary—as a matter of fact, I find that injecting the personality of the author (imperfections included) enlivens the text.
I didn’t resonate with Taleb’s style of writing and found him rather obnoxious and self-centred, but I was definitely inspired by how he didn’t care about anyone and was unapologetic about his style.
Later in the week, I watched the movie A Star is Born which stars Bradley Cooper as a famous singer suffering from alcoholism who meets the young talented singer played by Lady Gaga. They fall in love, and he mentors her to become famous.
In one memorable scene, which I had to rewind several times to jot down what he said, he gives the ultimate words of wisdom on voice and talent. He said:
Look, talent comes everywhere, but having something to say and a way to say it so that people listen to it, that’s a whole other bag. And unless you get out and you try to do it, you’ll never know. That’s just the truth. And there’s one reason we’re supposed to be here is to say something so people want to hear. So you got to grab it, and you don’t apologize, and you don’t worry about why they’re listening, or how long they’re going to be listening for, you just tell them what you want to say.
Taleb’s words coupled with the particular scene from the A Star is Born left an indelible mark on me. The message was loud and clear. I need to be strong enough not to follow the herd. I need to be individualistic to allow my own voice to come out. Most of all, I need to ignore how people will judge my writing. I need not apologise for my actions. I must dare to be different, but not just for the sake of being different but rather allow my authentic voice to come out.
There are many better bloggers out there, who write on similar topics. Let’s take my last article on Acceptance. It’s professional and well summarised. But I’m sure when you Google ‘Acceptance” you will find many similar articles. Some will be better and more illuminating and some worse. I feel that my voice is lost between the vast sea of materials found online. Perhaps, what I want to be and what people want to read is someone who doesn’t follow conventional wisdom, quotes Wikipedia or cites the expert research but rather their own perspective on the subject. People want to understand the concept by someone wearing a different set of glasses than theirs.
Armed with this understanding and with my Bowers & Wilkins noise-cancelling headphones, I started to write in a free-flowing, letter-like format and found myself in a state of bliss. I sensed my heart open and smile, as it’s been a while since I felt this lightness when writing.
I also explored several book ideas I had and settled on one of them, as I could use the same letter-like format on it. I felt this style of writing I’m embarking on is getting me closer to my writing voice.
The gloom I’d felt on Wednesday started to lift immediately. It’s like I always need clarity to give me peace and one big goal hovering around in my mind that can provide me with purpose. It’s peace and purpose that I have craved all my life. Peace and Purpose.
As soon as I’d finished writing this letter, the rains came down with great ferocity. It was a short thunderstorm. It felt like the rains came to wash away my fears, my insecurities and my old voice.
Suddenly, I felt renewed and reborn if only for a few more days until the next wave of doubts resurfaces again.
