The Examined Life

I didn't blog yesterday because I was held up at the office until pretty late. Today is Deepavali and I spent my entire day working at home. There are festive fireworks going off in the night sky now, which always put in a reflective mood for blogging.

The late afternoon rain, which seems to be a daily occurrence nowadays did not prevent me from jogging in the park just now. I always feel good after a good run. Part of my joy of running is being able to do it while listening to an audiobook.

Over the past decade, I've listened to countless audiobooks and audio courses on a wide variety of topics, especially when I'm driving. This has been the most rewarding aspect of my life in KL. It total compensates for all the hours that I've got stuck in traffic commuting to and from work.

Come to think of it, I've had this habit of listening to audiobooks ever since the 90s. At that time, I only had a cassette player in my beat-up Nissan Sunny. But that was enough for me to enjoy so many audiobooks, while driving around KL.

When I was working in Singapore, I took the bus to work. My Walkman was my every-present trusty companion. Among the good memories I had while talking the daily commute from Bishan to Clark Quay was listening to great books like Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Hardy's, The Mayor of Casterbridge and Kafka's The Trial. I loved the simplicity of my life in Singapore--renting a small HDB room and taking the bus to work and having dinner at the local hawker center. I can't think of a happier time in my life.

OK, perhaps the only other time I felt happier was when I was living in a small hotel in Jakarta for 2 years. Because the taxi commute to work was short, I didn't listen to many audiobooks then. But I read oh so many books all over Jakarta. When I finally moved out from my hotel, I had to ship two boxes of books by TNT back to Malaysia.

Perhaps it is the contentment of simple living that made me a confirmed bachelor. One can even accuse me of being too easily contented. But I know that the purported joys of starting a family have never held any attraction for me. I amuse myself by thinking that perhaps had I been born in another age (maybe in Medieval Europe), I would have been a monk in a monastery, happily studying scriptures and illuminating manuscripts.

What I feel deeply these days is a sense of gratitude. Gratitude for living in an age where knowledge is available in great abundance. We can be disciples of all the wisest masters both living and dead, if only we are interested. The only thing that's finite is our time and energy.

Some choose to find happiness in the material world out there. There's nothing wrong with that. To each his own. We are all born different. Everyday, I examine life, peeling off one layer only to find many more layers of awe and wonder.

Life is infinitely rich, if we care to see clearly. I might be ignorant of many things but after everything that I've gone through in life, I know this one dictum to be true: the unexamined life is not worth living.