#7

on living intentionally and purposefully, despite

dear you,

i hope you’re doing well & you’re being kind to yourself <3

today’s piece has been inspired by some recent breakthroughs i’ve had and is quite fitting for growth this summer - i hope you can take something from this!

also i reached a hundred subscribers shortly after my last piece which is so so crazy to me! i started this newsletter in january after being motivated to write by seeing so many of my friends excel in their work. i thought it would just be for my friends / mutuals so it’s unreal knowing that there’s a hundred of you beautiful people who actually want to read what i write :’-) this piece, then, is a special sort of thank you for all your support and love 💌

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a tweet by chen chen

i’ve been reading mary oliver’s ‘devotions’ recently. her love for the physical world and the bond between living things never fails to inspire me.

i’ve also been thinking about love and community a lot, and its role in helping to live intentionally and purposefully. eating together, spending days and evenings together. laughing together. people allow us to communicate and understand ourselves and the world around us.

“on earth lately i’ve been looking at everyone like i love them & maybe i do”

chen chen, elegy

we care so much for each other. we think about each other often. we want to share things - feelings, thoughts, food. i watched ‘my liberation notes’ earlier this year as it came out, and there’s a line i’m reminded of right now.

“i used to never understand why people took pictures of everything, but now i want to do it too. this is the food i’m eating right now. i wonder what you’re eating”

my liberation notes (2022)

i love you. i want us both to eat well.

i feel like i have always been so preoccupied with the past. i can’t blame myself entirely for this, however, since i am only human. these experiences have shaped who i am and continue to do so. i think mental illness plays a huge part in this behaviour - i recall reading something recently that spoke about how the passage of time is different for those of us who are impaired in that respect. this can be through a lack of perception of time or the opposite, by agonising over the past or future. this doesn’t just apply if you’re mentally ill of course, and things like the pandemic and media have definitely impacted how all of us view time, especially in regards to a compulsion to fret over it. this preoccupation causes a lot of distress, clearly, with myself spending restless nights agonising over how i have been perceived, misunderstood or treated by others. people pleasing, watering down my personality / self and isolating myself were results of my negative experiences with this. i spoke in my last piece on how i’ve been making peace with myself and everything that comes with me - recognising strengths and not being afraid of vulnerability and flaws. with a nature of people pleasing and caring too much about what people thought about me, i found it hard to accept that i wasn’t always liked. this wasn’t something that stemmed from self righteous or obsessive behaviour, but rather the opposite where i wanted to mold to expectations to escape myself and the vulnerability of being seen. because of this, the fact that i wasn’t palatable or aligned with certain people was misunderstood by me thinking that i had some sort of lack or fault.

bill nye

i think, in order to live intentionally and purposefully, we have to let go of this preoccupation - of ourselves, of the past and of the future. i’ve been trying to take my time with things for the past few years, even in the most mundane tasks. i hate rushing, and feel it’s usually the reason why things go wrong, which is why i always try to plan everything. my mornings, for example, are always slow and i like to take my time to wake up early and adjust, eat breakfast, get ready etc even if i have a busy day ahead. this has sometimes meant that when things go wrong, i’ve struggled to come to terms with it, and i’ve recently trying to be more accepting of this. i used to get really upset if something went wrong and would feel like the entire day was ruined but i’ve tried to change my mindset about it and try not to let things get to me too much now - i feel what i’m feeling without letting it engulf me whole.

hayao miyazaki, the kingdom of dreams and madness (2013)

ask polly

how lucky we are that, even crushed under the weight of sadness & grief, we are capable of giving love and joy to other people, and they are often more than happy to give some back.

“i suppose i love this life, in spite of my clenched fist”

andrea gibson, birthday

“to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it”

ellen bass, the thing is

life is terrible but we have stories. it will always be worth living because even in spite of everything, there is love. we are the meaning of life. we have each other. each moment of laughter and warm feeling in our stomachs makes life worth living. so why not grab it by its roots? why not love each other? why not live and laugh and cry?

mikko harvey, for m

tennessee williams, we have not long to love

mary oliver, wild geese

life is full of moments and rituals. we can make these beautiful. i remember reading about how ‘life becomes more meaningful when you realise the simple fact that you’ll never get the same moment twice’ and its shaped my attitude to things alot recently.

“the little things? the little moments? — they aren’t little”

jon kabatt-zinn

louise glück, sunrise

suika (2003)

so maybe if you sit outside on a summer evening and close your eyes and feel the breeze, you’ll see that you’ll be okay. maybe if you cook something, feel the sun on your face. maybe if you talk to your friends, help people, eat seasonal fruit and vegetables. maybe if you make something with your hands. maybe if you drink some tea, stretch your body and draw a silly picture, the world will feel like something your hands can still hold <3

lastly, a reminder:

mahmoud darwish, the butterfly’s burden (tr. fady joudah)