New Words
"Does it feel like your birthday today?" he asked.
I had to think about it. It feels a little less like my birthday with each passing birthday; it isn't like last time anymore where I could count on Papa planning something for me and on getting presents. Later on, as an adolescent armed with a driver's licence I would draw up my own schedule of celebrations, a week's worth of one-to-one outings with each of my closest friends, watching movies, ice skating, having sleepovers, trying new cafes and restaurants. Normal celebratory things, normal celebratory things that I miss. I think they call this growing up. Or in hipsterspeak, 'adulting'.
Below are two words I've picked up over the past one to two years, years I've spent in the workforce, living independently. When I say picked up I refer also to the concept represented by the word, not just the word itself - which is not to say words cannot be savoured in themselves; I am a firm believer that one can feel differently about a word (the casing) and the meaning it represents (the content). At any rate, here are the two words:
1. Self-care
First I ever heard of this concept was in Singapore. Island engine of progress and productivity. Near killed my creativity, faced day in and day out with homogenous train stations and foodcourts, walking the exact same route day in and day out to those exact same train stations on roads lined with plants whose positioning may as well have been computed. Most unbearable, perhaps, were the faces of my fellow commuters as we tapped in and out of those stations, all part of a daily grind. Monotony scrawled in their blank stares, in their 'national posture'; head bowed, device in hand. And yet it was on this little red dot that I made friends whose hands make art so beautiful it can make my heart ache.
It was against this background, which included, as a matter of course, the notoriously long working hours identified with Singapore, that I came to know of self-care as a necessity and not a luxury, an imperative and not an afterthought. Practise self-care, they said, if you want to last. It was as simple as dropping everything to get at least seven hours of sleep each night (a dream, some weeks), or burning one hour of that precious sleep each week to get some running done on those cycling paths that link suburbs together (one thing I did love about Singapore was how a single woman could go running at midnight if she so wished and arrive back home unharassed).
Because it was such a foreign concept to me, I still struggle with discerning when taking time out is selfish and when it is warranted. For me, this is a season of learning to draw and maintain boundaries. I know that by nature I am a giver, but realising that some ways of giving (which I had been practising by default) are unhealthy and unsustainable threw me off balance to say the least, and I'm having to learn a lot about boundaries and balance these days.
2. Owning
(a Decision), aka Taking Responsibility
What the heck does this have to do with anything? Everything. My practical knowledge about 'being responsible' was limited to 'doing what you're supposed to do'. But it never extended to the internal realm of corresponding emotions and what psychologists call congruence, which is best likened to reaching a place of peace in one's understanding amidst conflicting circumstances.
This 'owning' thing is a more recent discovery, and a slightly surprising one when I find, upon introspection, that I need to learn this. I had not been doing this. It's as simple as not feeling sorry for yourself when you run out of time to unwind because you reached home later than expected because you chose to lend a listening ear to a colleague who was having a hard time juggling home and work. You made the decision to stay and listen, you deal with having less time for other things. It's the same as me telling my kid at LCH not to cry if he gets a tummy upset because we've warned him twice in a row not to eat those tiny baby mangoes.
There is such a long way to go, it feels like, some days. But all this had to happen; whatever that's happened leading up to my turning twenty-six today had to happen, even if it was something as scary as gradually and seemingly losing the spark that drives me to write as a compulsion. I am terrified of losing the writer in me. I believe that people are made of places, and Singapore changed me. Since Singapore, I've experienced an estimated 80% decrease in 'gimme paper' moments, which is the most layman way I can think at the moment to describe all the times I froze mid-thought, afraid to lose a precious phrase or excerpt by dislodging it with a newer thought until I had found somewhere to store it in (or on). Call it inspiration striking, call it living in my own world; I wouldn't know myself if one day I found it impossible to return to that state.
For now I'm using my limited reading-for-leisure time to grow in my knowledge of God's Word and to prepare for marriage, both life-changing things, but neither consisting of particularly aesthetically pleasing forms of writing. The artist in me sometimes thrashes in revolt at the barrage of plain prose, of instructional writing or dry historical accounts. My soul needs abstract writing to breathe, and sometimes it only seems like the right thing to do to take time out and let it dip in writing that's beautiful in more than pure content - and not cry afterwards for want of time to do my laundry, or one of those grownup things.
I had to think about it. It feels a little less like my birthday with each passing birthday; it isn't like last time anymore where I could count on Papa planning something for me and on getting presents. Later on, as an adolescent armed with a driver's licence I would draw up my own schedule of celebrations, a week's worth of one-to-one outings with each of my closest friends, watching movies, ice skating, having sleepovers, trying new cafes and restaurants. Normal celebratory things, normal celebratory things that I miss. I think they call this growing up. Or in hipsterspeak, 'adulting'.
Below are two words I've picked up over the past one to two years, years I've spent in the workforce, living independently. When I say picked up I refer also to the concept represented by the word, not just the word itself - which is not to say words cannot be savoured in themselves; I am a firm believer that one can feel differently about a word (the casing) and the meaning it represents (the content). At any rate, here are the two words:
1. Self-care
First I ever heard of this concept was in Singapore. Island engine of progress and productivity. Near killed my creativity, faced day in and day out with homogenous train stations and foodcourts, walking the exact same route day in and day out to those exact same train stations on roads lined with plants whose positioning may as well have been computed. Most unbearable, perhaps, were the faces of my fellow commuters as we tapped in and out of those stations, all part of a daily grind. Monotony scrawled in their blank stares, in their 'national posture'; head bowed, device in hand. And yet it was on this little red dot that I made friends whose hands make art so beautiful it can make my heart ache.
It was against this background, which included, as a matter of course, the notoriously long working hours identified with Singapore, that I came to know of self-care as a necessity and not a luxury, an imperative and not an afterthought. Practise self-care, they said, if you want to last. It was as simple as dropping everything to get at least seven hours of sleep each night (a dream, some weeks), or burning one hour of that precious sleep each week to get some running done on those cycling paths that link suburbs together (one thing I did love about Singapore was how a single woman could go running at midnight if she so wished and arrive back home unharassed).
Because it was such a foreign concept to me, I still struggle with discerning when taking time out is selfish and when it is warranted. For me, this is a season of learning to draw and maintain boundaries. I know that by nature I am a giver, but realising that some ways of giving (which I had been practising by default) are unhealthy and unsustainable threw me off balance to say the least, and I'm having to learn a lot about boundaries and balance these days.
2. Owning
(a Decision), aka Taking Responsibility
What the heck does this have to do with anything? Everything. My practical knowledge about 'being responsible' was limited to 'doing what you're supposed to do'. But it never extended to the internal realm of corresponding emotions and what psychologists call congruence, which is best likened to reaching a place of peace in one's understanding amidst conflicting circumstances.
This 'owning' thing is a more recent discovery, and a slightly surprising one when I find, upon introspection, that I need to learn this. I had not been doing this. It's as simple as not feeling sorry for yourself when you run out of time to unwind because you reached home later than expected because you chose to lend a listening ear to a colleague who was having a hard time juggling home and work. You made the decision to stay and listen, you deal with having less time for other things. It's the same as me telling my kid at LCH not to cry if he gets a tummy upset because we've warned him twice in a row not to eat those tiny baby mangoes.
There is such a long way to go, it feels like, some days. But all this had to happen; whatever that's happened leading up to my turning twenty-six today had to happen, even if it was something as scary as gradually and seemingly losing the spark that drives me to write as a compulsion. I am terrified of losing the writer in me. I believe that people are made of places, and Singapore changed me. Since Singapore, I've experienced an estimated 80% decrease in 'gimme paper' moments, which is the most layman way I can think at the moment to describe all the times I froze mid-thought, afraid to lose a precious phrase or excerpt by dislodging it with a newer thought until I had found somewhere to store it in (or on). Call it inspiration striking, call it living in my own world; I wouldn't know myself if one day I found it impossible to return to that state.
For now I'm using my limited reading-for-leisure time to grow in my knowledge of God's Word and to prepare for marriage, both life-changing things, but neither consisting of particularly aesthetically pleasing forms of writing. The artist in me sometimes thrashes in revolt at the barrage of plain prose, of instructional writing or dry historical accounts. My soul needs abstract writing to breathe, and sometimes it only seems like the right thing to do to take time out and let it dip in writing that's beautiful in more than pure content - and not cry afterwards for want of time to do my laundry, or one of those grownup things.
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