Why get married?

eM has a post that hit really the spot.

A recurring theme on this blog has been: why marriage? eM has some good points on the lines of why bother. It prompted me to go back and think about why I got married in the first place.

I was never that into the idea of marriage. Up to the point I turned 18 or so, I regarded the whole institution with a mixture of skepticism and distaste. All the marriages around me seemed mediocre at best, pathological at worst. The few shining examples were so few and far between that I regarded them as as unreal as the American Dream (which I now realise as quite an accurate assessment).

Then, when I was 17, I fell properly albeit reluctantly in love. Nevertheless, for at least two years of the four year relationship, I was convinced that I did not want to marry my boyfriend and rebuffed all such suggestions, with good reason because even as a love-addled teenager I possessed the ability to see when a person was just not right for me in the long term. Nevertheless, after two years, I was resigned to it and appropriated the fantasy. I started naming our kids. Ugh.

By the time I was 23 and met V, I had grown up a bit. I had accepted that I was probably going to get married, mainly because I didn’t have the strength to cop out and forge my own path but also because I largely enjoyed being part of a couple. The fact is that the path of the unmarried was and probably still is so vague as to be non-existent. The marriage fantasy dominated popular culture and there weren’t any alternatives or I wasn’t imaginative enough to hold on to them. I guess I wasn’t that rebellious after all. I distinctly remember V asking me what I thought about marriage and I shrugged and said: “It’s inevitable.”

When V asked me to marry him, yes, was my instinctive answer. I never really wanted to marry anybody before. But he seemed to be the right person to do it with, that is, the right person to hitch my star to long-term.

At the core, though, my reasons for marrying were pragmatic:

1. Due to our life situations, we were essentially condemned to a long-distance relationship unless one of us took the leap and moved. V hated Bombay, but to his credit he tried to stretch out his time there. I loved Bombay, but I was open to other places. I’m not sure whether it was before or after we decided to get married that I agreed to move cities to be closer to him, but I know that I would not have been comfortable moving without some sort of serious commitment.

For me, marriage represented a declaration of seriousness and willingness to commit because it’s a legal contract. It is also a public social acknowledgement of partnership. I needed that in order to be comfortable making a big emotional leap like moving cities. (Of course, later when V moved to Hong Kong there would be no question of the option of me moving without getting married due to immigration restrictions. More on that later)

About needing the marriage commitment at the emotional level though, I don’t know why this should be. Recently, a girl moved to Hong Kong to be closer to our friend here who she was romantically involved with. They decided they needed to be in the same place to see if it would work out and she was in a position to make the move. The understanding though was that it was a trial, she is not even living with him (which I find a bit crazy considering HK rents). But she was willing to take that risk based on what she knew of him. And why not?

At that point in my life, at leas, I don’t think I would have been willing. I’m not the most trusting person, and while I’m a special case in my level of mistrust, I now realise that in general marriage is a demonstration of lack of trust rather than the reverse. You need the contract because you don’t trust the relationship without the box and the neat bow and everyone standing around in a circle clapping and saying “hear hear, we acknowledge you two as one”. We need the contract and the public declaration as much for ourselves as for other people. And that need is not a demonstration of strength and confidence but the reverse.

2. To have children: Right now, this seems to me like the most convincing reason to get married (and it’s possible my views on this might evolve). Assuming that both parents want to play as big a possible role as they can in their children’s lives, it makes sense to maintain one household and merge assets. Children require the melding of assets and lives to an extent that it may be wise to govern the relationship with a contract. Though I guess, it’s possible without. Again, in my case, with that much melding, I’d prefer some legal thingamajig. The larger point is that if not the actual contract, the traditional marriage-like relationship of parents living in the same house with their children for 20-odd years seems to me like the most suitable arrangement, all other things being equal (like the ability of the parents to get along).

3. To shut up society: Basically, if you’re pretty sure you want a long-term thing with someone, it’s just easier to get married and not have to endure your parents black faces when you decide to live or move cities or buy a house with your partner. Like recently, my friend in office was asked by her special friend (she never calls him her boyfriend, god knows why, I’m dying of curiosity) to go to Taiwan with him to visit his dying mother. She felt compelled to go but mentioned it was going to be a pain to explain first to our boss and then to her parents why she needed to suddenly depart for Taiwan. If she was married, this would not really be a big deal.

Admittedly, this is a pretty trivial reason, but it’s one of those “okay whatevs”, if your relationship is already serious. Should not be the primary reason to get married.

Practically speaking, the real reasons to get married, which are related to all the three points I mentioned in a concrete way, are the institutional ones. The legal system in many countries confers certain privileges on married couples because they are deemed as ‘family’ in a way that other non-blood relations are not. The very obvious one is immigration. Hong Kong at least would not grant a dependent visa otherwise. Then, there’s spousal healthcare benefits (my husband’s bank recently approved nomination of non-spouse for healthcare benefits but generally planet is far away from such a conception.)  There’s a question of who gets to visit and take decisions in case of serious illness. There’s the question of inheritance and property rights.

Frankly, all these things make it easier for states to govern relationships than anything else. There is no reason why people should not be allowed to nominate whoever they are close to at the time (like ‘buddy benefits’ some airlines offer their staff for free flights) for special benefits and privileges and also will their assets to whoever they wish. Moreover, the presence of marriage contracts does not make parting any less acrimonious. But it is easier for the legal system to standardize, thus we must all fall in line. We can lobby for change, but in the current system, most of us have no choice in the matter unless we want to give up all these benefits and sometimes necessities like living with the person you love (Here is where we spare a thought for people who are not allowed to get married and thus denied these benefits).

More and more, I’m coming to see both the marriage contract and the institutionalized fantasy of long-term partnership as similar to religion. It’s really not necessary anymore, and doing away with it as a norm would be a step towards imagining other forms of partnerships and relationships.

20 things to let go of in your 20s

Mincat posted this list on FB and I immediately felt very smug because I had achieved a lot of it. Fortunately, being smug wasn’t on the list. Here’s my analysis of my performance:

1. The phone numbers of people you should never have the option to contact again if and when temptation strikes, social media connections with people you feel you have to constantly prove yourself to, and the general presence of those who you’ve simply outgrown.

FAIL: I kind of like the temptation of the tenuous contact. In fact, I insist on stalking exes on FB once in a while just for the frissons of nostalgia combined with triumph it gives me. I’m pretty disciplined about not dialing under the influence so I’m not sure I need to implement this one. Though I have deleted or blocked annoying or irrelevant people on FB.

2. The timelines you crafted for yourself in the past. There’s no right time for anything, and what’s most painful is being attached to what’s “supposed-to-be” as opposed to whatever is.

Agree. Though I was never one of those who felt life was obliged to give me anything. I am sometimes surprised when I don’t get what I want – mainly academic and job related – but I move on to alternative plans pretty quick. I am also super fortunate that life has given me a lot though. Part luck- part discipline on my part I think.

3. Speaking ill of people for leisure. Making commodity of someone’s life over drinks or at a party is not only something you shouldn’t have done in high school, but should have left back there if you did.

50-50: I do love a good bitch sometimes. However, there are certain people in my group we should stop bitching about. We’re getting there, one bit tongue at a time. I also don’t beat myself up for gossip in general and the odd catty comment in private. Gossip as long as its not mean-spirited can count as being informed and catty comments are worse in public IMO.

4. Waiting for a relationship to save you, because doing so is a dangerously unstable foundation on which you’ll end up building the rest of your life.

Can’t say: I got married too early to claim success in this one. However, I have gotten over thinking I will crumble if my marriage does. I wish I had achieved this in my 20s though.

5. The old stuff on your résumé, like the service work you did in high school or the club you belonged to for a week your freshman year of college. Nobody cares about it professionally, and probably not personally either.

Tee hee: I do have some of this still on there. Though I tend to select and prune depending on the job application. For some applications, I do think volunteer work or certain extracurriculars adds value, showing you were one of those diversified people early on. Maybe employers out there are sniggering though.

6. Remnants of former loves that you keep around because you’re still holding onto a part of them. You can say they’re sentimental things you’ll want to have in the future, but the reality is that if they only serve to remind you of something that’s missing in your life, you can do without them.

Fail: I’m a complete hoarder. I have notes Curly drew me when we were in the eight standard. I love opening my box of this stuff and going through it once in a blue moon. Admittedly it’s in my mum’s house and this does not make her happy because she would like me to stop squatting on her drawers. These reminders make me smile and don’t impact my life in a negative way so I’m keeping them (sorry mum!).

7. Feeling as though you are obligated to be the person someone else sees you as. It doesn’t matter if it’s your parents, your former self or someone you love, you can respect all of those authorities and still realize that you are not required to be anybody but who you choose to be in the present moment.

Yay, over this: I’ll admit that the person seek validation from the most is V. But I’m mostly at a place where I don’t give a fig.

8. The need to always have the last word and win every argument.

Win: Friends, please tell me this is true. I would add here also the need to take a contrarian position just to stir up an argument, which used to be MO for the longest time.

9. Abusing your body with crash diets, dangerously excessive alcohol consumption, disregard for what nourishment means, etc. It doesn’t prove that you’re cool because you’re “reckless but in control”– it just shows that you aren’t being responsible or realistic about your body or health.

Win: I will add here getting enough sleep. Also taking vitamins. Also taking a day off when you’re ill, even during periods if possible. Also getting a pap smear. Etc.

10. Financial dependency, because there’s a difference between receiving help when you genuinely need it and using someone under the guise of it.

Win: I have to thank the stars (okay and also V, hmph) that brought me to Hong Kong and made this possible because I really don’t think I could have achieved this in India.

11. Deciding who you are based on upward and downward comparisons to people, or worse – believing that you are the projection of what you assume other people think of you.

Win: I don’t think I ever did this, definitely not past my late teens. I do sometimes invent myself like a character though, but I think everyone should do that, and stray from the templates please.

12. What success means. Not being able to pursue a passion in the same way you support yourself is not a mark of failure. But not being able to incorporate those passions into your life outside of work usually is.

Yes, thank you! Sick of hearing about people feeling upset because their job isn’t their passion. It ties into 2. I think.

13. Excessive consumption, and spending as a means of validating self worth. You are not what you have nor are you what you can convince other people you are.

Almost there: I won’t say shopping doesn’t give me a thrill, but I’ve pared down considerably. Lack of time does wonders for this. Also Pinterest has helped me assuage my need for beautiful things by letting me ‘have’ them without actually buying them. I actually go over my own boards now and then and just enjoy all the beauty I’ve accumulated and prune just like it was my own closet.

14. The idea that you’re “above” any kind of work. Entitlement regarding what kind of job you should have is a real thing. In my book, doing whatever it takes to provide for yourself is a success in that it’s a display of one’s resiliency and character.

Yes, thank you! Should be read in conjunction with 12. I’m not entirely a subscriber of whatever you do do it best because first, some jobs are just bone-tiring and exploitative and most jobs are quite pointless and there’s no need to be the best at pointlessness, but do a decent job is what I say and if you’re in the mood give it your all even if it’s not your passion.

15. Being too passive about things that very much matter to you and then getting upset when they go ignored by the people to whom you should have voiced your opinion.

50-50: I tend to be passive, but then I don’t get too wired up when things don’t go my way. However, to stave off the blues that come from what-if, I have begun the practice of reflecting on what really matters and giving it my all. Case in point, wedding, which regretted being passive about. Another example, PhD which I have left no stone unturned over, as far as sanity allows.

16. Anxiety over the way your body fills out– or doesn’t– as you enter adulthood. Fat is not a thing you are, it’s a thing you have, and having too much or too little does not make you any less capable of the things that genuinely matter. The body is just a vessel.

Win: As I’ve said before, pregnancy liberated me from the tyranny of the body. I am so over agonising over my weight. I do occasionally feel irritated with my own bulges and fear that my wallet might not survive buying another set of pants, but in a non-worried I’ll get to you eventually sort of way.

17. The illusion of control. You can work hard, be devoted, care infinitely, and things could still crumble. Nothing hurts worse than spending your life desperately grasping at having a kind of control that is only viable by delusion.

50-50: This is something I struggle with. In relationships, I have a complicated set of defense mechanisms to ensure that I am in control of my own mental wellbeing, but these can be the cause of mentral stress as well. Living with a newborn is a lesson in loss of control, and one I learnt the very very hard way. On the one hand, my attitude to life elucidated in 2. means that I don’t think things will go my way even if I gave it my all. On the other hand, giving it my all could also be a form of control when taken to the extreme. Thus, I found myself eating close to nothing and breastfeeding for four months, for example.

18. The desire to settle because you’d rather not be alone. You will pay for it eventually.

Can’t say: I was fortunate enough to meet my ideal mate early enough for me never have to think about this.

19. Insulting people’s life choices out of your own resentment and bitterness. People who get married young, or work at jobs that pay well but aren’t fulfilling are easy targets, but are ultimately neither inherently sad nor wrong, though neither is doing the opposite. But the need to insult them is almost always a reflection of yourself (and p.s. I’m guilty of it).

50-50: I’ve always been able to see different perspectives and I think I’ve become better at this, but I do judge. Like the travel post. I don’t believe not judging is bad, I just think judgement needs to be well thought through and preferably not voiced to the judgee because no constructive purpose ever comes out of it. The only purpose of judging is to finetune your own standards for your own behaviour.

20. Acting on the idea that any other person is beneath you, especially for what they think, feel or believe. There’s a lot to be said about a person who can discuss an issue with someone who inherently disagrees, and a lot more to be said about a person who can’t.

Fail: Related to 19. I really do think a lot of people are stupid don’t take the trouble to learn enough and then shoot their mouths off. And I do have knee jerk reactions to some people based on their stated political preferences. Need work on to counting to 10 and giving them a chance.

Do you think this list is valid? How do you fare?

Change

I am different. I feel different because most of the time I feel nothing except the flicker of an eye-roll. And this is good. I have changed, but does it count as change if you’re just changing back?

We’re special. Not.

Mincat sent me this post about unhappiness in Generation Y. It has stirred up some backlash in the US with many young people claiming that their angst stems more from unemployment in an economic downturn than any delusions of specialness, which may well be true. But some of what that article says does seem true to my peers by which I mean urban upper-middle-class 20-and-30-somethings in India.

What my peers seem to expect of their careers is money, a position of some status, and fulfilment. And they want this fast. It doesn’t help that some people seem to have achieved this and posted their success on Facebook. It also doesn’t help that the mantra we hear all around us: if you work hard enough, or even better, if you want something bad enough, it shall be yours (possibly because the Universe will conspire to make sure you get it).

I’m not sure if I grew up hearing that I could be whatever I wanted to be. Even if that message was as pervasive then as it is now, I never internalised it.* Either I was born with the humble gene or I learnt it from my parents who were neither grand nor had delusions of grandeur. I did hear that I should work hard and my parents would support me. That is all.

I’m always confused which generation I belong to. I think it’s X, and that may account for the watered down message. Our generation was susceptible to the message that we should find our passion and pursue a career in that. Even that was tempered by parents who were first or second-generation strugglers and therefore prone to steamrolling their children’s passion into more practical goals like a career in engineering or medicine. My parents did let me pursue my passion, but in retrospect I can see that they emphasised the work hard part more than the passion or the returns. They supported me in the rough times that come as a result of not quitting. (eg, when my boss was being an asshole and I really wanted to quit my job, my dad drove me to work every day).

But this is not about me. It’s about people around me. It’s one thing to discover what you’re passionate about and make a go of realistically building a career in it. It’s another to expect that said career is your birthright. It is not. Nor is it guaranteed that if you work hard you will be successful. There are millions of people who work hard and are not successful. There are also some lucky souls who do not work hard and are  successful.

There was an interesting article I read on Chinese graduates doing internships at the start of their careers and their chances of success. The children of professionals and connected parents had the highest chance of success simply because they already knew how to function within The System. The earnest and hardworking children of poor peasants rarely got offered internships. Nevertheless, it’s the stray success stories from adversity that get highlighted to us as role models, as if hard work alone guarantees success. If only. The wisdom we pass our kids should be more like this: If you’re not from a wealthy and influential family, work hard and you have a better chance of being successful if you’re lucky.

Whenever I hear of people pursuing offbeat careers and leading a comfortable life, I always try to get the backstory. Who is propping them up? Often, someone is. Very rarely does someone do something alternative without extreme sacrifices and lifestyle compromises which most of us would be loathe to make anyway. Getting the offbeat jobs that pay well takes some social capital, it’s rarely “individual merit” alone, but that’s the myth we are all fed. This is not to discourage anyone from pursuing their dreams, just that you need to have a realistic idea of your chances of success that are not gleaned from the shining examples around you. And sometimes the financial risk might not be worth it, and that’s okay. At least for most of us in the upper-middle-class, it is not occasion to whine about how unfair life is. Life is unfair, but it is actually less unfair to us so suck it up.

The other thing my peers seem to want is for all this to happen fast. There was a survey of Hong Kong graduates that elicited much derision because most of the graduates said they wanted to be CEOs in 10 years or some such. Dream big and all, but unless you have a godfather or your exceptional talent is coupled with fantastic luck, you are probably going to be spinning in the wheel for quite a while. And maybe that’s okay?

We also seem to think that because we’re special in one area, we’ll generally be successful. So I’m good at academics and aced almost every test that came my way. But I’m not naturally good at math (though I can do well on tests I study for), can’t speak the local languages, don’t like high stress, and not that interested in corporate schmoozing. So I’m probably not going to get to the top. And I’ve accepted that and moved on. Your one big talent might not translate into untold riches and fame. Accept your limitations or put in some serious work to overcome them.

A lot of people my age are angsty, and that may be due to being in the workforce for close to a decade and it losing its sheen. That’s natural. But the angst gets compounded when we think that somehow we deserve better or that there is some magical and not-too-efforty solution that will resolve this. Most of us actually are fortunate enough to have some options and wiggle room so maybe we should focus on that instead of letting hearing about the next person in their peer group who just published a book to fabulous reviews or opened their own kitsch little bookstore get us into a funk.

*One area in which I acquired some arrogance was academics. I was effortlessly academically successful and that give me the impression that I could always easily enter institutes of higher learning, but there too I was disillusioned early on and was fortunate enough to be around people of increasing intellectual calibre as I grew older. In fact, I was and still am, loathe to take up positions I feel I am not experienced enough to handle well.

Head or heart

It has been a longstanding desire of mine to own art of some seriousness. Okay, I already own two paintings I love but in the case of both, I am not completely sure they are the original work of the artist. I want to have a little art collection with pieces that imbue history, thought, technique and which hold their value.

When I visited MinCat in Delhi last year, we walked into a gallery and on a whim I asked the price of a painting by a well-known artist and I was surprised that it was not out of my league. And thus, the dream was renewed. It got lost in the minutiae of daily life and budgeting for a while and then our bonuses arrived. And suddenly, I remembered.

So for the past week or so I’ve been lusting after art. I am so tempted to rush in and buy something, anything, but I feel obliged to do research and ask questions. (Appeal to readers who know anything about modern Indian art. Help me! I need guidance here!) We were at dinner with friends and V asked them whether they thought the painting I had in mind was worth the price. And I happened to mention that while the piece I was considering is not my necessary my ideal choice, but that I am considering a few artists because they are, to use stock market terminology, blue chip, at least in the Indian context.

I then got a lecture on how I must not think about investment value and buy only what I liked because I would have to live with it and I should think about how it is going to fit into my home. I have read this advice over and over, every article on buying art seems to say it, so it’s almost a cliché.

The thing is I am not buying this merely for decorative purposes. If that was the case, I would have hopped over to Shenzhen. Moreover, I do have the money to spend huge sums on decoration. I am passionate about art but if I am putting down this amount of money, I would like it to hold value, which is not being unrealistic because certain art does hold value.

The example I gave my friends was the apartment we bought in Hong Kong. I have always said it was not my dream apartment, which seemed to shock people. This didn’t mean I didn’t like it. I liked the apartment very much. However, my decision to buy it was also based on the bet that it would increase in value given certain factors (and it did). That is my principle in buying any property: 1) Could I live there? 2) Investment value. The two things have to balance in my head for the deal to work for me.

Ditto with buying jewellery. I believe gold has investment value. I also like that it’s pretty. Win win. And before you go on about how you hate the sight of gold, I’ve been there. I am now at the matronly age, or at least stage, where I can see the beauty in gold.

I realised that this is my attitude to many major decisions in life. I recently redid the Myers Briggs test and came out an INFJ. I had always thought of myself as ruled by the head but it seems that I am equally ruled by the heart. I need the two to balance out to my satisfaction, and much of my agonising stems from this desire to find a mean point that appears optimum to me. Sometimes, like in my choice of husband, the perfect choice appears intact and then the decision is a no-brainer. My decision to marry was one of the quickest I have ever taken. I knew it was right.

Other things not so much. I agonise. Some may think my reasoning too intuitive (like V). Others would find it too calculating. But I am constantly striving to balance the two, something that reading Linda Goodman’s description of Librans revealed to me a long time ago. Only then, I didn’t realise that the balancing was between head and heart.

So which do favour in your decisions-making – head or heart? And do you know anything about art? (If yes, email me!)

Pontifications

So today the Catholic church has a new pope, Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, aka Francis 1. He was a bit of a surprise to those predicting the frontrunners, though apparently he was a frontrunner in the last election which Joseph Ratzinger, then Pope Benedict, won. For a while, there have been calls for a Pope from outside Europe and finally, there is one, also the first Jesuit pope. Latin America is still the safest choice from the developed world, the closest culturally to Europe, but it’s a start.

The Guardian had this interactive “Choose your own Pope” page and even as other had an entertaining time picking their favourites based on names and face (Kurt Koch, anyone?), I lost quickly lost patience.

It’s my personal preference that the Pope looks like a benign grandfather, even if they are not as John Paul II, the Pope of my childhood, did. Pope Benedict was too hawkish-looking for my liking, Pope Francis seems to fit the bill looks-wise, and as V said, “at least he can stand properly on his own”, although he’s 76. He is said to be conservative (and came out against gay marriage) but he is close to the poor, which is something. He is said to have given up the luxurious archbishop accommodation in Buenos Aires for a simple flat and a commute to work on the bus. So that’s nice. Will he be able to bring the Curia, the powerful papal bureaucracy, to heel? He’s an outsider, and apparently when offered a secretariat job after the election of Pope Benedict, he said “Please, I would die in the Curia”. But he did rise from priest to cardinal incredibly fast and there’s definitely politicking involved in that so many he’s not as politically naïve as one thinks.

I’m going to use this opportunity to pontificate (pun intended) on my views on religion which have evolved from childhood rebellion to a distanced peace.

Watching the news footage of the papal conclave, I did not roll my eyes at the pomp and ceremony as I would have as a teenager. The pomp and ceremony, the ritual, the performance, the theatre of it, is the point. If it was practical, plain, close to real life, it would defeat the purpose.

Increasingly, I see religion and the paraphernalia of it, as art, as a performance that is meant to both stir and calm the imagination. Recently, I read a quote from a book “Seven Days in the Art World” in which a woman at an art auction confessed that she sees art as her mother sees religion, as a way to unravel the mysteries of the world, and for her, the viewing of art and the participation in the surrounding practices is like worship.

And so is religion. It satisfies the human need for narrative, for community, and for ritual tying narrative and community together. To do this, there are a lot of frills. The frills are not peripheral. If not the essence, they are still essential. The medium is the message, as Marshall McLuhan said.

There might be those of us who don’t need this form of narrative characterised by mystical ostentation in our lives. Some flee to the other end, retaining the spiritual essence, the fanciful pared away and scorned. In theory, in my rational mind, that is the path I subscribe to. In my aesthetic and emotional one, though, I like the frills, I’ve always had. Why should a church be so ornate, why have legions of saints, why have unexplainable mysteries? Why not? The purely rational and factual is boring. Fiction often holds great truths. Stained glass is pretty and gives children something to look at while their mothers kneel and their teenage cousins check each other out. It is why I have remained Catholic though my beliefs at core lean towards the Protestant.

There are those who believe they have thrown off the chains of narrative altogether. That they have pierced through the aura of mystery and discovered that The Emperor Has No Clothes and shouted this truth loud and clear. The thing is, maybe everyone, okay not everyone, but many people already knew that. But they liked pretending they could see gorgeous robes.

And also, can we ever throw off narrative? In a book on neuroscience made simple that I read, one of the special characteristics of the human brain is narrativising. We are wired to do it. And till date, I think, we might be wired to create fictions which allow us to metaphorically pass our burdens on, where we can believe another walks beside us always. A lot of people need that, some more than others, and the ones that don’t have often shored up privilege over centuries. The world is sufficiently controllable that they don’t need the stories to make sense of it anymore.

Even then, I doubt we are ever entirely free. Inspired by Nietzsche’s Death of God, Roland Barthes’ wrote The Death of the Author , and Michel Foucault countered  that we can never really kill the Author, or at least not yet. The void left by the Author is filled by something else, and that something else is often not that different from the Author.

It has increasingly struck me how atheism was taking on the characteristics of religion, starting first with a tendency to irritating proselytizing (yes! spelled it right. I think) and now there’s this.

It was Pope Benedict, I think, who said that religion provides the counterpoint as science races into the future. It is the balancing weight, the one that ponders over implications, that calls “caution, caution, caution”, that pulls against change. And frustrating as its presence is to those of us who want to race ahead, because we have already established that 2+2 =4, maybe there is a place for the leaden challenger.

I believe the narrative structure of religion is beautiful and useful, particularly for children. It can become a prison and, yet, most religious people are not fanatics. They use the fiction to suit them.

So why not? Because the Church, and other religious organisations, have been responsible for so many atrocities over centuries, for the violence, for the conservatism. Some people are affronted that the Church is involved in politics and money. But all these are characteristic of any multinational organisation and almost all nation states. It’s the nature of the beast. They are providing a service, a service costs money, and when a service goes global, it will not be pretty as it tries to consolidate its power.

If we boycott religion, will we boycott banks, large companies, nation states? Some may, but most won’t because it’s too damn hard and unless there’s one degree of separation to the violence, unless it becomes personal, the purposes it serves to one individually trump the greater bad.  Some of us are in a position to see religion as a frill but to many people it isn’t, it is the glue of their lives, and all our logic isn’t going to fill that gap.

That’s not to say, we have to swallow every idiocy and injustice. Standing in the system doesn’t mean you can’t speak against it. I’m not arguing that we all buy into religion. I myself now have only one foot in. But it is a foot I am loathe to remove, because as I grow old, as I turn to gold and pearls, those red robes, slow-moving sceptres, incense, painted ceilings and slow movements are a performance I quite  admire.

#Weverb12: lose

 lose [HOPE]:  Did you have to say goodbye to a person, or even a cherished object, this year? Take a moment to celebrate the memory

Fortunately, I did not have to say goodbye to a person. The big loss this year was my precious iphone, which I hung onto through flagging performance until one leaking water bottle spelled its timely death.

I want to use this post to reflect on and give thanks for technology. A constant modern narrative is how technology has disrupted our lives creating such threats to life and liberty as superficial Facebook posts, obsessive photographing of one’s lunch and checking one’s phone during dinner. Some brave rebels are actually opting out of these with smugness that is terrible to behold.

Internet addiction and the irritations of Facebook  notwithstanding, I think the benefits of mobile technology are great. My uncle who used to be a real estate agent, lovingly stroked his smartphone recalling how he would spend anxious hours tapping his foot at some agreed upon meeting point, dash off to find a payphone to call the missing client and rush back only to be told that someone had come looking for him and gone away. Yes, a dinner table in a restaurant with the kids glued to a phone is not a pretty picture, but at least when the kids are young, it allows both parents to eat at the same time and even have a conversation, instead of one parent having to dash off after a restless toddler.

The smartphone is no longer so much a phone as an organiser with the capacity to make phone calls. I use my phone least for making calls. Things I use it for are:

1. Browsing the Internet – a huge, huge technological leap the consequences of which range from playing a part in the collapse of the Berlin Wall to simply being able to Google anything and not have to let people’s stupidity and ignorance invade ones mind. (One also hears of how the Internet is rife with rumours and rubbish, but somehow I manage to always find more sense than not, simply because the Internet offers the capacity for sifting). Also for staving off boredom. It is always assumed that one is doing something mindless on one’s phone. But actually, I read a lot of news and interesting long-form journalism on my phone.
2. Related to the above, checking email – yes, it is annoying if people expect you to be accessible to work 24/7 but like all technology, we have to set the limits. That the capacity for it exists does not mean we have to use that capacity or wish for a time when such capacity didn’t exist because that meant we avoided having to be assertive with our bosses. It does help that people have an alternative route to you, when someone urgent comes up and you need to respond. It involves training people to use their discretion, something essentially to being a full functioning adult in society.
3. Making notes. I use the notepad function to jot down ideas for posts, for articles, for novels, for PhD thesis.
4. Taking photos.
5. Playing music.
6. Recording interviews.
7. Most recently, keeping accounts.
8. My current phone even has an app that can check the balance of my Octopus card by swiping the card across it. It’s only a matter of time that the phone will be able to be used to make payments like a credit card.

When I first got my phone and I realised that one device can do all this, I was stupefied. It is a boon for a disorganised person like me. Now I have to remember to put just one thing into my bag, instead of an assortment of 10 things, each of which has an individual potential to be forgotten or lost. Yes, it means that if this one thing gets lost, a lot of other things do too but (fingers crossed), this has not happened since I got my iphone, perhaps because I live in a safe city, perhaps because I have only one thing to check for.

As a journalist, I always found that the slip of paper I noted an address or phone number down had eponymously slipped away. Being able to check email on my phone or Google an address was a huge relief. One might argue that this meant I didn’t have to step up and change my disorganised ways but actually, I don’t think I would have been capable of that anyway. I would have just bumbled around highly stressed. The phone gave me an easy way to be a bit more organised. I will never be as on as some people I know but I’m a better person and my life has been improved by my phone.

Now, back to the phone that died. It was, as I said, on its last legs so I was not bereft to see it go. I was impressed with how long it lasted under such dire conditions as being chewed on and flung to floor by small children. I was proud I had not lost it. But I was ready to move on to a phone with a better camera so I could record my children’s progress better. Again, not having a camera imbedded in the phone meant I would simply take less photos. I have moved on so thoroughly that these days when I encounter an iphone, I stab frustrated at the place where I imagine the Back button must be.

And in the end, V managed to get the old phone fixed. So while it lies at the bottom of a box, powered off, it might one day see the light of day again.

#Weverb12: respond

respond [LISTEN]: Do you actively listen to your inner voice/conscience? Describe a time this year you heard and responded to it.

So my instinctive response to this was, yes. But on second thought, I’m not so sure. My inner voice tends to be more of an inner debate, whereby I incessantly weigh pros and cons before making a decision. I once read the Linda Goodman description of Libran character traits and it explained exactly what I do – which is endlessly go back and forth in the pursuit of finding that perfect balance.

V is also a Libran but he is a very quick decision-maker (the stars must have been differently aligned when he was born). Making decisions around him became a source of great angst for both of us. I could literally feel him breathing down my neck. From his perspective, it was frustrating standing around tapping his foot while I went: “Okay this, no this, no this, no that” seemingly ad infinitum. From mine, the sound of his tapping foot threw my train of thought out of whack.

Initially, this led to some tension, then I followed the path of going with his decisions a lot, then I began to rebel leading to a lot of tension and now I’m trying to strike some balance again. The truth is that V’s decisions, by and large, tend to be pretty good, especially the big ones. Like my current job. When I got the offer I was dithering as usual – not helped that I was in Bombay at the time and my father was not exactly thrilled with the idea of me doing something so low profile – and finally, V said, just do it.

So it is tempting to let him make all the big decisions, partly because he has a high success rate, partly because he’s quicker and in very small part because he bears a slightly bigger responsibility then (though I almost never rub this in).  However, this goes against the grain of my feminist beliefs and also, he can get really overbearing. I am okay with him making decisions about my life when I am okay with it but not without asking. Thus, when I had to buy a phone and he was quite clearly trying to bludgeon me into his preferred route, I did not appreciate it.

Nevertheless, being around V has made me a quicker decision-maker by force of husband’s irritation. Thus, for the smaller things, I just make quick decisions and compel myself not to go back obsess about them.  For example, choosing what to eat at a restaurant. It used to be one of those things that annoyed him because I hadn’t made up my mind right up to the time I was giving the waiter my order. So for these things, I adopt a just-choose-something-and-stick-with-it approach. For a while, V had been edging me into decisions or outright telling me what I should order (often he got it right) but I no longer accept this. Same with shopping.

The hardest decisions to be made were when our babies were very little. I just could not accept V’s knee-jerk decisions because with my babies’ health, I wanted no margin for error. I wanted to weigh pros and cons but I was also paralysed by lack of complete information, guidance and a patient spouse. It was a very tough time.

My inner voice also leads me to be a softie. If someone is selling something, I feel like I have to reward their effort by buying it. Especially, if it has some feel-good tag be it “charity” or “organic” attached to it. So, for example, I signed up to do a scheduled monthly donation to a charity. I’m actually happy about this but it means I need to be very firm when approached by other charities because I’m already committed. It also means that last weekend, I bought two beetroots for HK$50 because I felt the need to support the farmers at a farmers market. V stood by shaking his head.

I will say, though, that for the medium-to-big decisions, the ones I am most satisfied with are the ones where I have spent a decent amount of time mulling over, and then they turned out well. For the small things, I’ll acknowledge Just Do It works.

Weverb12 – stay

3: stay [LISTEN]

How did you stay in the moment this year?

Ok so I actually had to Google what “staying in the moment” means because although it’s a phrase I hear around a lot, I kind of dismissed it as positivity mumbo-jumbo that admittedly sounds pretty.

This is the best explanation I could find, because it doesn’t simply toss the phrase out like some self-evident truth but actually explains why it might benefit you.

I am not sure I entirely buy why staying in the moment is important for everybody, because what if your moment is really shitty? Like what if you’re living in a famine? Should you be cherishing that moment when you’re faint from hunger? (It is possible to cherish hunger; I have done this while trying to lose weight, tipped off by Oprah, but people living in starvation conditions can be forgiven for abstaining from not cherishing their involuntary hunger). Though, I guess, it could be applied to when one is eating, so you really relish your food, however little, and don’t start worrying where the next meal is coming from. Hmmm.

Okay, so I get it (particularly as most of us don’t live in famine conditions). I think it’s the corollary that most often attaches itself to “stay in the moment”, which is “live for today” that I don’t agree with. It’s just not practical. One could take days off from planning for the future but one can’t entirely live in bubble-today-land.

That off my chest, it will not surprise you that I am not excellent at staying in the moment. My way of being is to live in la-la land, constantly wandering off into mental ruminations. Nor do I want to change that, frankly. I’ve thought about it but I quite like reading while I’m eating. It actually makes me eat a little slower.

A bigger issue, though, and one that I am not sure will be solved by staying in the moment is that for a large portion of the past six years, I’ve felt like I’ve been in limbo. It started when I moved to Hyderabad and I found that I hated living there, but I had committed to an MA programme and I’m one of those stick-it-out types. One might say I was not committed to living in Hyderabad, but, in fact, I had been quite optimistic (rare for me) about the whole thing, and I do believe I gave it my best shot and it really didn’t work for me. I was happiest when I escaped to Bombay or Bangalore when I could.

Then I moved to Hong Kong and I really liked it. It appears that many people didn’t get this impression, and I admit some part of me did cling to Bombay, particularly my friends there. I have this theory that one has to be committed to the place one is in and have a proper friends circle in that place, and I’m slowly coming to the realization that in the modern world it might be normal for it not to be quite so clear cut. But regardless of the ties to Bombay, I was happy. And so while strictly not in the moment (spatially at least), I was happy, and isn’t that what this is about? Gradually, I committed to Hong Kong and rooted here, so even that was resolved.

But unfortunately, just a couple of years after that, talk of moving to India surfaced and now I find myself in limbo again. It is hard to stay in the moment when your family is frantically planning for the future, a future you’re not convinced you want. One might argue that it is exactly at this time that one needs to stay in the moment but the thing is, planning a move requires, well, planning. Even as a reluctant participant, I can’t be so irresponsible as to say, I’m going to pretend this doesn’t exist. Although I have chosen the ostrich approach on this issue a lot, decisions do come up to be made and they have to be made envisioning a future. In this instance, I really wish I could stay in the moment, and I find it problematic that the situation demands that I pay less attention to the present.

I am aware that this post, which is supposed to be about staying in the moment, has turned into a list of reasons I don’t. However, at the micro-level, I think I’m pretty good at staying in the moment. Like, another allied idea to staying in the moment, is thankfulness. One day, V mused that we have so much and are not thankful. The thing is, though, I am.

I count my blessings a lot. I cherish them and don’t take them for granted. My lovely children (who I find cute even when they puke or cry or fight), my amazing husband (who I appreciate even through the miasma of irritations that have surrounded us, and I have told him so to his great surprise), my wonderful helpers (their competence, warmth, laughter, generosity), my job (which has slowed down and is back to being manageable), my nice co-workers, the many luxuries I can enjoy, the efficiency of the MTR, the beauty of the weather, the yumminess of the burger I plan to eat at lunch, my polka dots on my new phone case, my phone itself, the wonder of the internet, the library at my disposal, never having had backache, I could go on and on. And this is not the first time I am thinking of this. Every day is filled with little utterances of wonder and thanks.

If I had to pick one thing that I have consciously stayed in the moment on and tried to freeze time in, it’s during time with my kids. Sometimes V points out that I am checking my phone when I am with them. But I think that’s ok. I spend plenty of time where I am fully and completely there, participating in whatever little adventure they are on, cherishing the silliness. I take more photos of my kids now that I have a phone with a better camera, but I still take relatively few. I realised this when I downloaded the photos of Benji’s birthday. What I have though is non-photographed moments, included the feeling, of just watching them live and then joining in that living with them.

Nevertheless, I am going to experiment with staying in the moment as a meditative technique, and choose one activity when I just focus on what I’m doing. Like brushing my teeth. Which, lately, is time that has been coopted by letting my kids into the loo with me, where they fiddle with my little pots of cream. Or maybe I’ll just club this one with doing pranayam. That counts as a staying in the moment thingie right?

 

 

On politeness

It’s a sign of how much I’ve grown that I am actually writing a post advocating politeness. As a child, adolescent and young adult, bluntness was my trademark. Because I prized honesty as a virtue, I believed in telling it like it is. To some extent, I still do. But I have learnt to curb my tongue and hold my peace. I’ve learnt that some things – many things – serve no purpose by being said in person, except to hurt other people. I have learnt to weigh my words.

I distinctly remember proudly telling my sister-in-law and her husband how I tell people what I think of them. I was unpleasantly surprised when I realised they were practicing this on me. I also realised that I had never been quite so blunt. That I might speak my mind to people whom I care about and who I assume I have an established bedrock of trust with but to people outside that inner circle, I am fairly circumspect. I might point things out but I never did use my tongue to lash out that much.

Living in Hong Kong has taught me to be even more diplomatic because that is a Chinese quality. You have to give people a way to save face and while this might involve a bit of looping around in circles, it is an art that is essentially kind. I am no master of it but it has helped me think because I speak.

Surprisingly, Caitlin Moran’s How to Be a Woman (an awesome book, everyone should read it) advocates politeness too. She points out that many sexist statements and behaviours would just not be acceptable under normal social circumstances. One can call out misogynists simply on grounds of rudeness. She advocates that people be nice.

I agree. For all my edges, I realise I’m nice. Too nice even. I cannot turn a salesperson away, for example. Everyone in my immediate family is nice. Among my parents, sister and I, I am the least nice so you can imagine. V taught me to me to put myself first sometimes, to say what I want and to not care. I had always thought I was an expert non-carer. Turns out, I had some distance to go. But I have realised it’s a fine line between standing your ground with good reason and being an asshole who is selfish and I am experimenting with that line.

Recently, I attended an academic talk where a visiting writer from India described Hong Kong as “one big shopping mall”. This was not meant as a compliment. Although Hong Kongers are used to people saying this – they say it themselves – I still thought it was rude (and frankly quite a boring cliché at that). Why does one thing that it’s okay to visit a city and the first thing one says to the residents of that place, without so much as a positive preamble, is negative? I also used to be one of those people that went to developed countries and scoured the landscape for flaws but now I see it for the churlishness it conveys. Just because it’s a first world country doesn’t mean its residents don’t have feelings.

When I look closely at people who are rude, I see their insecurities. A handful of them are genuinely arrogant and full of themselves. The rest are hiding their I-feel-small behind a wall of I’m-to-big-to-care-about-your-feelings. I can recognise those people a mile off because I was one of them but that doesn’t stop them from making me uncomfortable. I also think they need to grow up. Or at least wipe the smirk off their faces and replace it with a smile if they can’t think of anything to say.

But above all, I think in personal interactions basic good manners – acknowledge people right in front of you, make a few comments on the weather if all else fails, say something positive before saying something negative – is a good rule of the thumb and would prevent a lot of unhappiness all around.

That said, Hong Kong is in an interesting situation right now. Because of the political set-up, people feel that the government does what it wants while pretending to listen. There are radical political parties who choose to be noisy and rude. Although I am drawn to more courtly political behaviour, the fact is that often what the radicals are shouting for is legitimate and that nothing would have been achieved if they went the usual route and waited for their turn to speak.

Can one be polite and be an activist? I guess not, and partly that’s why certain professions are closed to me, because I don’t have the personality for them. But even with activists, I think they need to be careful that rudeness does not become a way of life rather than a means to an end. Or maybe in order to be rude in their public life, they have to practice it a lot?