Selfie-Examination

Yesterday was Thaipusam and a public holiday, which was why I missed my weekly blogging session. I had some family and social obligations to attend to. All in all, the long weekend was a productive one. I was pretty happy with how I spent it.

Today feels like I've had a productive day but almost the entire day was spent trying to resolve some technical problems which I am still struggling to find a solution to. But let's leave that aside for I'm now parked at my favourite cafe with a nice hot Americano, ready to while away my time, blogging.

What a delight it is to be taking my "fingers for a walk", as I used to refer to blogging. Part of the joy of blogging is that, you are under no pressure to write about anything in particular--or at least on this personal blog, which carries no specific theme or agenda. All I do is chalk up miles--covering blank spaces with my aimless ramblings.

You see how easy it is to blog about nothing. And then you latch on to something, from nothing: A lot of our lives are spent doing nothing. We spent hours texting or surfing aimlessly, reading gossips and superficial news; we spent evenings and nights binge-watching our favourite TV series; we get stuck in traffic making pointless excursions to the hottest nightspots or eating places in town. That's how we spend our lives. We call that living.

Our entire lives are spent pursuing distractions. It is as if, the mere exposure of a moment of silence and repose is an abomination to be avoided at all cost. All you see on Facebook are pictures of people 'having a good time' at places which their friends would envy. At the end of our lives, we'll look back at our collection of happy selfies and tell ourselves: we've lived a good life.

My philosophy in life has always been: to each his or her own. We live the life we choose. If eating gives you pleasure, by all means go and pursue all the gastronomic delights that life has to offer. Some, usually men, find sex the ultimate pleasure and devote all their time towards that pursuit.

What is a good life? This has always been a question debated by philosophers throughout the ages. I am old-fashioned in this regard. I subscribe to Socrates' idea of an examined life as a life worth living. What is an examined life? It is a life observed. To use a more Buddhist term, a mindful life.

There's nothing wrong in leading a hedonistic life. To pursue pleasure as a form of distraction is to avoid examination of oneself. If you are enjoying something: examine the sensation of pleasure that you feel. What is the essence of that experience?

There: I am enjoying the exquisite pleasure of standing before the majestic sight of Borobudur in Java.

That could have been another great selfie moment for me. But I did not have a camera phone then. I went there alone, off-season. I took a slow overnight train from Jakarta to Yogjakarta. In other words, the entire journey there was quiet, meditative and attentive. I thoroughly enjoyed that excursion because it was more than another tourist trip--it was a pilgrimage. A pilgrimage is something that involves the body and the soul. Something that transforms.

A selfie moment can be deep meditation on the superficiality of life. You need to take hundreds and thousands of selfies to be able to penetrate the essence of selfie-taking. One then gains an understanding of the fears and insecurities of the ego. To look beneath the veneer of smiles and see the desperation that drives each and every one of us. And there you have the spiritual value of selfie-taking. It is as if we need to expose our images to the world so that our inner selves are reflected back to us, in its essential nature.

In other words, everything we do, every moment that we spent our lives, can be examined. Especially a selfie. A selfie is meant for the world to see but look closer: we actually see our inner selves. And there in the very act of snapping and exposing are epiphanies awaiting.