A Pure Heart, A Fickle Mind …
My weekends in Hanoi, Vietnam are relatively chilled out and relaxing because I don’t have the typical distractions or ‘extra-curricular’ activities I would usually surround myself with back home. Hence, I spend them doing a few things I love, for myself, by myself — mostly meaningful, but sometimes, on a lazy Sunday, doing nothing much. Most times, however, I try to keep myself occupied by doing something to keep my sanity in check.
I’ve spent the past few weekends working on my second book, a novel this time. I’ve been spinning story ideas and characters in my head and felt I needed to start putting this down on paper to hopefully make steadier progress this time around (my first book of poetry and short stories took an awfully long time to make it to print).
Just so I don’t get lazy and fall into the procrastination trap again if I sat around at home, I’ve started to frequent lovely, quaint coffee spots around where I live for a change in environment that will force me to focus on my writing. I also like to people watch — which too can be distracting. But its people watching and striking conversations with random strangers that sometimes gives me the inspiration, diverse views, stories, and tidbits of information that I often ponder over and then infuse my writing with.
Last week, I observed a sad scenario. A local girl, probably in her mid-20s, dressed in a crisp white cut-off body suit sitting by herself, nursing a large cup of coffee. Her head was hanging down with her straight golden hair falling over, while she fixed her eyes on her phone that lay on the table. She was vigorously typing and continued to do so for a while. I continued to observe. From my line of view, I could partly see her face — she was sad. She was crying, quietly, wiping her tears now and then and taking a sip of coffee while continuing to type.
Everyone has a story. Not everything can be shared. Not everyone wants to share everything.
I was thinking about her and about life. I was tempted to say hello and ask if she was alright, but I didn’t. I was then pondering over what stopped me from doing so — I like talking to random strangers and hearing their stories, but on this occasion I held back. I feel, with age, I’m becoming more reserved and less open to making new friends — not in a bad way, but most definitely not instantly striking conversations with random strangers, which I would quite easily do before. I now prefer to just stay quiet, observe, and write and only build connections that matter. I was relating this to someone the other day, and we started talking about one of our favorite topics of discussion on a Sunday afternoon — stoicism and mindfulness. This time the conversation went even deeper where we explored and exchanged ideas about ‘nihilism’ and if it’s a good or bad thing. I’ve been reading a great deal about this topic recently, and I was trying to relate it to life journeys and experiences, and I remembered the girl at the café.
We’ve all had such moments — ups and downs and possible emotionally stressed times as well and that moment was very relatable. It dawned on me that the reason I didn’t respond or even felt obliged to was because I’ve learnt to accept that this is life — the ‘realistic moments’ of an otherwise meaningless life. My friend and I then debated about ‘nihilism’ and if this were the path we should follow so life becomes simpler and experiences less painful and/or non-joyous?! A nihilist believes that life is meaningless and the only known truth is the existence of the self — in other words, a selfish approach to life. It’s possible, but then would that justify your existence? And would it adversely affect people around you? Most likely.
Instead, the more stoic path is ‘existentialism’ — believing that life is meaningless but embracing self-awareness and believing that meaning can be created by self. Errmm, OK that’s a mouthful, I know. But what this essentially means is that life will throw curveballs at you in the form of emotional pain, unexpected events, grief, sadness, hardship and, on the other extreme of the spectrum, joy, euphoria, and exhilarating surprises. Awareness helps you to rid out or ride the wave because both pain and joy are just different sides of the same coin that will occur throughout this meaningless life from time to time. What’s important is not to dwell in either, rather experience it meaningfully, containing happiness and learning lessons from bitterness.
The heart is pure, but the mind is fickle. We must control our mind so we can master our feelings — easier said than done, but awareness and mindfulness help to stay true to this, and above all, remain sane in a cruel world.