Contents and Its Discontents

Surprisingly I haven't been able to read more during this pandemic lockdown. This is mainly because I did not alter my daily routine at all. I spend most of my productive hours writing code, which leaves me quite exhausted at the end of the day. I usually get to read early in the morning and just before bedtime.

Time really flies when you are coding. I sometimes listen to some light podcasts while I'm working. There's so much content out there and one can only consume so much in a single lifetime. Which is also why I'm more selective nowadays. Movies used to be my weekly activity when I was working in Singapore and Indonesia. But these days I only watch a handful every year. It is also due to the fact that so much of our cinema screen-time is taken up by superhero movies, which I don't particularly fancy. But I still try to be acquainted with them because they are part of popular culture. I catch snippets of these movies on HBO every now and then.

It seems like the main preoccupation of our lives are consuming food and content in all its forms. Food is required for the sustenance of the body while content, if well-chosen, nourishes the mind. When it comes to content, I try to vary my diet too, even though I do have my favourite genres. Even though I do have a preference for non-fiction, I still try to squeeze in some fiction every now and then. Last year, I even read a couple of classics which I have never read in their original form: Treasure Island and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and a Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

Every book I read changes me in some way. Every piece of content pushed through the digestive system of the mind, changes its neural mapping. You might forget most of its details, but rest assured, you come out of it a different person every time. So the real value of content is its transformative power, and not so much its entertainment value. Entertainment helps in the delivery of a book's message and insight--very much like how we use seasoning to make food more palatable. A good book does its job after it has been read. And its digestion happens, slowly and imperceptibly. Its nutrients seep into every aspect of our lives.

Health freaks will always remind you that you are what you eat. But more importantly, you are what you read. Like certain types of food, books even have curative powers. I remember reading Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga when I was in university and that helped me to overcome a very challenging period in my life. The poetry of Dylan Thomas, Shelley, Byron and Wordsworth formed the intellectual backdrop of my students years. My days commuting to work in Singapore, were filled with works of Kafka, Thomas Hardy, Orwell and Tolstoy.

During these difficult times of the Covid-19 pandemic, when our usual supply of food is disrupted, it is good to reflect back on what really makes us who we are. Does being able to eat expensive meals in fancy restaurants make you a better person? You might be able to post some pretty pictures on Instagram to impress your friends, but ultimately who you are is what you take away from every life experience.

Life's real content is not your Facebook timeline, it is the insight you've gained from all these experiences. What are these insights? Simple. Just imagine that your Instagram, Facebook and Twitter accounts have all been suddenly erased overnight. What's left in you? Only your insights and your discontents. And that's who you are, ultimately.