White Silence

It struck me this morning that silence is a place of singularity from where every sound, every word and all of music emanates. Very much like the colour white. Like light, it contains everything, all the colours we can see and all the colours we cannot. Its a lifetimes work to find the beautiful things coming off of it when of course white or silence is the absolute beauty. Maybe this is the reason that knowingly or unknowingly the churches and many religions have white as a significant colour as part of their culture. It is the beginning and the end. It is the clay that we carve our meanings from and we try to grasp our minds onto it. It is the place where form itself takes place, even deeper, matter itself takes place from white or nothingness. Nothingness is not empty, its so full of everything that its no particular thing.

As I sit here while the rain hits the roof, there is white noise. All frequencies come from white noise, it captures everything and its nothing. White is infinite possibility.

Every morning the day is white, atleast in large portions it isn’t coloured. Each doing is creation. From white we paint our day. Each day is a painting that we keep for a lifetime. So be loving to the space that it affords you in its time. Life is a sculpture in progress.

Do the things that are good for you

Its easy to make excuses. You might be trying to give up smoking or alcohol. A sneaky beer, or a puff on a cigarette, is easy to shrug off as one of those things. But it’s not one of those things. By lying to yourself, you’re only consigning your goals to failure. Lying, or making excuses for your sloppy actions, means you’ve broken a promise to yourself. Once you do that, you’ll fuck up, over and over again. - Nimsdai Purja (Beyond Possible)

Maybe it was reading Nimsdai Purja’s fascinating book Beyond Possible at the start of the year that something struck in me. Even before reading these amazing lines at the end of the book I figured how easily we give up on the things that are good to ourselves and make life miserable. There are so many small actions in our life that we have to do to be on the route of the person we want to be. The actions that are absolutely required and are also largely easy if you put your mind to it.

Nimsdai had many goals in becoming the record holder for climbing the 14 highest mountains of the world in a record 7 months time, task that every mountaineer had written off, but amongst this was one really important goal that I could relate to. The goal to prove that if humans put their mind to it, the impossible stretches way beyond what they think it resides currently.

One of the reasons I like this book is also because its a strong and frank book. In a culture that is so accustomed to make you feel that its ok to miss out on the small things or its ok to not have become what you had set yourself up for, in a culture of rapid giving up, this book stands out and tells you that you are stronger than you think you are and can focus your mind to work on the things you love no matter how hard the going gets. I believe we don’t get joy in our life by relegating the things that we want to achieve or people we want to become to the backburner. Its a recipe for a regretful life. Its only by facing them head on that we engage ourselves wholly into the meaning we set for our lives.

Such things like exercising daily, meditating, sleeping on time, eating healthy, disengaging from toxic people, focusing on work, etc. might sound trivial and advised to death and ‘one of those things’ to miss out on, but simply because these things look mundane doesn’t mean they are unimportant. They have the potential to elevate or shatter your identity to pieces. James clear talks at length about how habits affect identity in Atomic Habits:

Every time you choose to perform a bad habit, it’s a vote for that identity. - James Clear

Yet underestimating this grave danger is so common.

Loving your work vs working your love

And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine. And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night. - Kahlil Gibran

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran is no ordinary book. Not reading it is being blind to the wisdom of life.

I went to get my brother’s guitar serviced yesterday at an age old store in Panjim. I noticed that the actual people running the place were very much in sync with their tasks, generous with their support and love to both the instruments and customers. They probably would have been there as part of a culture originally set by the founder but the desk was helmed by someone who is new, likely the heir of the founder and very much out of tune in a place so synchronously charged. I didn’t get my guitar back as there was still work to be done but the way it was being tended to was like a baby in a healing spa. Anyone wise enough should bypass the owner to reach the sanctum of the store where one can actually feel Love through work.

Many a times we tend to forget how privileged we are with the work that we have gotten into. Its not hard to get lost or overwhelmed by the logistics of the trade and see work as drudgery. But every work we do badly, when we let the drudgery, the resentment, the regret, the lack of something else, the myriad problems of life, when we allow it to flow into our work and let it infest our work, we take it away from someone who could do it better, more happily.

Its not so much that you have to love your work for that means they are two different things. Applying something to something else. And it especially doesn’t work when you have signified through ages of conditioning that ‘work’ is something unenjoyable. For joy and love are companions and taking joy away from love nullifies it. So instead, work up your love, like you work up a gentle flame for your beloved and express that through the task at hand. Yet again as Gibran puts it:

It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth….It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.….It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit. - Kahlil Gibran

I’ve noticed over time that working as such not only makes the outcomes better but allows me for much more gratification in the things I do.