Milking the Meaning of the Moment

I decided not to go to a cafe today. Wanted to spend some time at home, in my room, on a weekend, for a change. I'm feeling very relaxed but sleepy at the same time. But no matter, we'll continue blogging today's article which will be a reflection on the passing of time.

I do not feel my age at all. Partly this is because the core beliefs of mine have not changed much over the past 10, even 20 years. I have gained a lot more in terms of knowledge and temperament, but I am still steadfast in my goal of remaining single, continuing my life as a secular sanyasin.

We remember our lives as a series of events. We feel that time passes quickly only when we do not have interesting marker events through a specific passage of time. Marker events are like, a change of jobs, marriage, deaths, births, accidents and anything out-of-the-ordinary that makes a deep impression in you. And your life is just remembered as a chronological series of such events. The less events there are, the faster time seems to fly.

Repetitive events or tasks do not register much in our minds. These become the background where the outstanding events stand out. Repetitions however build momentum. Repetition also creates habits. Habits are simple automatic 'macros' that get executed on cue. We can program the body and mind with useful macros by choosing what we perform repeatedly. When we go about our daily lives, we are most of the time, driven by such macros, contributing to the sense of swiftness in time's passing.

The series of marker events become the framework for us to recollect and to place the chronology of other less important events, when they are recollected. I would remember when I read Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi, because I have a memory of reading it at the airport in Hong Kong, while waiting for my flight home, on my first trip there. I choose to read outdoors because of this--the location where I read a particular book, even a particular page is registered in my mind clearly.  

Some great memories I have: reading about the mutiny on the Bounty at the Day's Inn motel in Palo Alto back in the early nineties; The Unbearable Lightness of Being in my rented room in Damansara Jaya, Barrow's Boys while enjoying a stout at the Bishan St 22 food court, The Horizontal Instrument at a park in Geneva, a biography of Sukarno on the train to Bandung and Hemingway's collection of short stories in a waiting room at Assunta hospital, Petaling Jaya. Having books with me, enriched my life considerably.  

Nowadays I'd also bring along my fountain pen and journal with me--creating new memories by writing at different locations, capturing the rich experience of writing with a fountain pen on a fresh crisp page of my journal.  Pens, books and journals are my everyday staple.

Life is lived moment by moment. What matters most is the moment itself, like now. I'm typing these words, every word is roughly a moment in time. Each moment is infused with memory from the past and an anticipation of the future. Memories are the fuel that propels us into the future. But in navigating life, one must focus on the moment at hand to fully live. Even a recollection of the past is a present moment, fused with the intensity of memory and the weight of its philosophical meaning.

Milking meaning from each moment, would be a good way of describing how I live my life. Even the most mundane moments have meaning. Every day when I perform my job, I try to infuse each moment, even boring ones with some kind of cosmic importance. By respecting the moment, you are acknowledging life and allowing that quanta of time to be a pixel in your overall picture of life.

Blogging is a way for me to live life intensely, because I reflect on every word that I choose, and I infuse them with the emotional force of my experience. The meditative act of writing is a great clarifier and cleanser of the mind. 

Our lives are ephemeral. We knit our experiences into the fabric of time and make our mark in physical space by building, destroying and rearranging matter. We attempt to procreate for self-preservation. But all that, in the end is in vain. What matters is the moment of time when it is lived. So milk the moment for what it's worth--whatever it is, that is the meaning and the totality of your life.

Seeds Across Space and Time

New Year's Eve is a good time to review the year that has just gone by and to peer ahead a little to see what's in store. I timed my year-end in such a way that I was able to finish reading my last book of 2017--Zaid Ibrahim's Assalamualaikum, which was recently banned by the government. I've had the book in my possession for a while but had no inclination to read it until I was reminded of it by the government's inexplicable move to ban it.

I have a huge array of books lined up for the coming year. The difficulty is always in deciding what to read. For 2017, surprisingly, my most enjoyable read was a collection of stories by Joseph Conrad "The Eastern Stories", which includes his short stories set in the Malay archipelago like Youth: A Narrative, The Lagoon, Karain: A Memory, The End of the Tether, Because of the Dollars and The Secret Sharer. And what great tales these are!

I actually bought this paperback volume back in 2001 at a bookshop in Nouvena, Singapore and have not gotten to reading it, as I found Conrad's prose a bit too ornate and convoluted for my liking. But I suppose our tastes change as we age, what was tedious about Conrad's writing then now seems so satisfyingly rich in atmosphere, memorable characterization and heart-wrenching emotion.

I have many books which I've bought but have not felt the inclination to read them yet, but I know their time will come. Books are like seeds that lie dormant, each one will have its time to sprout and grow in my mind, when the conditions are right. And as you grow older, you have a better sense of timing--what is the right thing to do at each moment in time. Every book will eventually have its day.

There was once a time during my youth when I had lots of time and not enough books to read. Now, I live in an age of information overload--there's simply too much content and way too little time to consume them. So I have to prioritize things wisely. Books are nourishment that one feeds to the mind, they provide maximum boost to the soul when ingested at the right time.

The anthology of stories by Joseph Conrad had to wait exactly 16 years before I was ready to appreciate the beauty of its writing. Books are durable supplies which we carry along with us through the journey of life, providing us the right nourishment at different way-stations along the path. And what wonderful nourishments do they provide!

One thing that has been constant all my life is my love for books. Thinking back, I've been an avid reader ever since I was a child and this habit did not let up even when I started working. 20 years ago, when I was working in Singapore, I spent many happy nights reading in my small HDB room in Bishan; I had spent long flights to US, engrossed in the collected works of Vivekananda and the autobiography of Isaac Asimov; I remember cold nights in Californian motels poring over books on the Mutiny on the Bounty and fond memories of myself sitting at a park in Geneva, reading The Horizontal Instrument by Christopher Wilkins; Yes, I was reading Sukarno's biography on one of my many happy train rides to Bandung; And that magical year 1995, spending hours reading Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi at the Kai Tak airport in Hong Kong, while waiting for my flight back to KL.

To me, part of the pleasure of travel is the opportunity to read. When you sit down at a cafe or a park at some foreign location, you get to slowly absorb the local rhythms of life. Travel is not simply shuttling from one tourist distraction to another. Travel, at least to me, is diving deep into the soul of a place. No better way to do that than sitting at a public place, with a good book and simply watch the world go by, as your attention dips in and out of your book, in between sips of freshly brewed coffee.

There's no greater joy in life to me than reading. Perhaps that's why I'm a reasonably happy person--because I have an endless supply of books to read! As I close the last chapter of 2017, I am opening another delicious new book: 2018. I welcome the new year with the anticipation of an eager reader, ready to dive into another new tome of adventure filled with thought-provoking ideas and wonderful leaps of imagination. Life is great simply because there are books and because there are readers and writers who partake in the ecstatic joy of the written word.

As I look back at all the books that I've read throughout my life, at various locations that I've been to, at various points in my life, I marvel at the many works that have enthralled me and influenced my thinking--seeds that I've gathered across space and time, seeds that have germinated in my mind and made me, for better or worse, the person I am today.

Let's now turn the page and dive into our new book: 2018!

The Cycle of Creation

A moment of reflection before the year ends. Stop. No cliche remarks about how fast time flies, please.

That shall be my New Year resolution (if any is needed at all): avoid cliches. It is difficult to be fresh and original everytime in whatever we do or say. But it is the nature of life to be constantly reinventing and regenerating itself.

Life is defined by regeneration. The old withers away to be replaced by the fresh and young, sprouting from seeds of hope. The universe is creative. On one end of the spectrum, it is creativity at the physical level: reproduction and procreation. On the other end, artistic and scientific creations.

To cease creating is to die. To work is to create. Everyday I strife to create something new. The mind continues learning because it is like a tree that draws in water and nutrients from its surrounding to produce new branches, leaves and flowers. Nature is constantly creating and recreating itself.

It is our duty to continue learning and creating. The businessman creates new opportunities for material wealth to manifest; the poet puts new combinations of words and imageries to evoke deep thoughts and feelings; the engineer imagines new structures, to be shaped out of matter and energy to accomplish ever more challenging tasks; the painter fuses colours and forms to unleash fresh visions of the world.

We honour life by creative work. All work is creative. The housewife who cooks and sweeps the floor is an artist whose masterpiece is a harmonious household, filled with happy kids and a loving husband, brimming with a love that is like sunshine.

We welcome the new year, like an artist welcomes the sight of a fresh canvas. Smell the fresh paint on the palette, pick up your brush, mix your colours and apply the first stroke on the blank surface:

Let there be light.

A Decade Ago

What a pleasure it is to have finally found the time and space to post this blog entry! How swiftly time passes--without me realizing it, this blog is already 10 years old!  What has happened in my life this past decade? This is probably a good opportunity for me to do some reflection.

I started this blog when blogging was just becoming the latest craze on the Internet. In 2003, the American invasion of Iraq had just begun; everyone in cyberspace was debating about the justness of the war. Everyone was "warblogging".

In Malaysia then, Jeff Ooi and Oon Yeoh were the first serious socio-political bloggers. Jeff Ooi was against the war and Oon Yeoh was on the side of the Americans. Both their blogs had a huge following.

Inspired by the these bloggers, I too started writing, and my first blog entry was posted on the 19th of March 2003. It consisted of only two cryptic lines:

Writing this from my office in Jakarta.
Love the city. Love the isolation.

I was warming up :-)  And yes, I was living in Jakarta then--perhaps the happiest period in my life.  Unlike now, I had time on my hands. Time, which I thought could be put to good use by blogging.

Initially, my blog entries, like everyone else's, were mainly comments on currrent events. Ocassionally, I would be inspired to post some philosophical musings like this entry that was posted on April 16, 2003: A Meditation on Time.  Entries like this were later to become my specialty, mainly because I found that I could write on such topics with reasonable ease. And the writing process itself was curiously therapeutic to me.

Of course, I had a lot to write about my life in Indonesia then: my observations about Indonesian life, especially the delights of Jakarta. I was and still is extremely fond of Indonesia and Indonesians. I found that I could blend in very easily with the locals and I was thoroughly entralled by the history and culture of the country. There was so much to discover and learn. There was so much to savour. Everyday was an adventure. I wrote so many entries like this, this and this, attempting to understand my love for the city and the country. It was a love affair that lingered until today.

I blogged from the office and on weekends, at the cybercafe. I was staying long-term at budget hotel then. Those were the days when Internet access in hotels was still considered a  bit of a luxury and Wi-Fi technology was just being introduced to the market. Internet access was difficult and slow. But for some reason, that was the time I was blogging most prolifically.

My years in Jakarta were like an exile for me. It was an exile from the corporate world of Singapore and Malaysia, from the ceasely barrage of e-mails and con-calls--the lifeblood of multinationals. I wanted some time to reflect, some peace and quiet to look back on my life.  And after that period of exile, I decided to return to Malaysia, to start a different chapter in my life. This new chapter spanned a decade but that is another story for another blog post.

The Consummation of Time

Just a few lines at the turning of the year.

The past years have been a quest to decipher the secret of work: Work for work's sake. Work as craft and vocation. Work that at times seems insurmountable but bears the promise of redemption. Gut-wrenching work that brings out the best and worst from within.

I plough on because work is my quest, my practice and my meditation. True and honest work that makes every intake of breath a moment of carthasis.

And in the dark of night, fireworks light up the sky to mark the passing of the year and the birth of another. Time teases and entices. Time tests and tires. Time stands testament to the Divine Quest.

I wake up with a fresh resolve everyday. That doesn't change. Time may test one's faith. But Time is a devil we know; and sometimes we cower behind him to seek escape and solace. Time fuels work. Work consumes time. Through the act of consumption, one finds the ultimate consummation.

A Moment of Poise

It is always great to be able to blog on a New Year's eve. It's an opportunity to reflect on the year that's coming to a close, and to look forward to the coming one.

Life has been quiet for me these past few years. 2010 has been a year where I sought to find right balance--between work and leisure, spirituality and materialism, art and science, indoors and outdoors, the mental and the physical.

I've mentioned elsewhere before that balance is the key to everything life. Wisdom can be defined as the ability to find the optimal balance between the polarities. The Buddhist state of mind called Equanimity is also a state of balance where one maintains one's composure in the face of life's ups and downs. Balance is everthing. The constant striving for balance is the essence of life.

On the eve of a new year, one is consciously aware that one is poised between past and future. We sit down to reflect on what has passed and we make resolve to do better in the coming year. But the fact is that every moment of our existence is a moment of poise between past and future. If we can consciously remain 'poised' all the time, we will be living in the present. We are never leaning over unnecessarily to the future nor being weighed down by the burden of the past.

Being present in the moment means doing the things that need to be down now, with focus and attention. There's a right action at every moment in time, and executing that action brings us into harmony with the forces of the universe.

This is what I strive to do everyday. To allow every moment to come to its fruition through right action. One moment at a time. One action at a time. One can't do any more than that. And along the way, we'll enjoy the fruits of our past actions; they always come at the right moment--with wisdom in its bitterness and humility in its sweetness.

Moment by Moment

As the year draws to a close, a mood of quiet reflection sets in. One finds that even the festivities of Christmas and New Year acquire a tinge of melancholy as one grows older.

It is time to take stock and reexamine one's course in life. Where have we faltered? What could we have done better? Hopefully one learns from one's mistakes and resolve to do better in the coming year.

In life, we should never have any regrets. Every experience that comes our way, arrives at the perfect moment to teach us what we needed to learn at that particular point in our lives.

Each experience is a cumulative effect of all our past actions. How we act and react to them determines our future experiences. Pain and pleasure are but feedback signals that nature provides to help us steer our way forward.

By themselves, experiences are neither painful nor pleasurable. They are what they are: stimulus and information fed into our nervous system. It is our reaction to them that determines whether they translate into sometime pleasurable or otherwise. The wise sees them as what they are--data, that are to be analyzed for their informational value.

Why do we experience pain and pleasure? Most of the time we have no control over how we feel. Something happens, and it feels painful to us. You lose someone you love, immediately an emptiness, an ache arises in your heart.

Pain often arises when we are exposed to uncertainty. Can I cope living alone? Who will help me when I'm in trouble? Where can I find solace and comfort when I'm down?

To borrow a phrase from Obama, we have to look at these as "teachable moments". Pain is the teacher, and we must be alert students who are ever-ready to lap up every drop of wisdom distilled.

Do not avoid the truth. Blame and denial are the most common tricks of the ego. Stare truth in the face. That is the only way to learn.

A year ends and another begins. Beginnings give us fresh hope. If we see a new year as a new beginning, that's good. But a beginning by definition is only a moment. It's gone as as soon as it arrives.

If we can treat every moment as a new beginning, then wouldn't we lead lives with so much more purpose and enthusiasm?

How is it possible to have a new beginning every moment?

Every moment is a new beginning if we treat every experience as a fresh lesson in life, ripe with wisdom and possibilities.

Take this moment.

What have your learned from it? Then go on to your next moment. Apply what you have learned from the previous moment. By applying what you have learned from the previous moment, the next moment begins with fresh possibilities. Each moment compounds the wisdom gathered from the previous one.

And that's how we grow, moment by moment.