wingwmn

spreading my wings and sharing random lessons learned along the way

Holiday Balloons

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Imagine a jar of inflatable balloons.
Take the balloons out of the jar and blow them up one by one.
Now, gather those balloons and cram them all back into the jar.

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This is, essentially, what “Coming Home for the Holidays” can feel like —
Middle-aged psyches 
inflated to inelasticity with obligations, practical needs, unfulfilled dreams, quarantine-and-non-quarantine-related trauma, unexpressed hurts, and ideas and opinions made rigid by lived experiences,
All trying to wedge under one roof.

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And learning that the only way to fit is to deflate 

or to burst.

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Family — our hardest lesson and our greatest gift.

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Original photo by Natalie from Pexels

An Examination of Fear

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“You’re basically committing suicide. For a man.”

I usually eye-roll at my Mom’s hysterics. But this time, I understood what she meant: In an imploding world, you’re safe here. You have food, help, and a support system that can provide whatever you might need — doctors, supplements, oxygen concentrators, horse anti-parasitics.

But you’re leaving. Protected by a questionably-effective vaccine. Taking a long-haul flight into a country where you know no one, are unfamiliar with the health care system, and can barely say “cough” in the native tongue. You are launching straight into ever-morphing travel rules and anti-asian sentiment that might find you homeless and helpless.

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As a traveler, I used to be pretty audacious. Unfortunately, covid fearmongering changed that. I am now pure paranoia. For months, I equivocated about leaving. What nga if I get sick? What if i . . . die??? I needed to find a way through this fear and wrest back some of my power.

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The Stoic Epictetus said, “Philosophy’s main task is to respond to the soul’s cry; to make sense of and thereby free ourselves from the hold of our griefs and fears.”

I parsed through my angst and pitted them against rational thought:
What if I travel and get sick? / You could catch covid even if you stayed home.
What if I can’t get medical attention? / Getting covid doesn’t necessarily mean you will need medical attention. And worst case, you have medical insurance.
What if I leave and there is a family emergency? / Get over yourself; staying home doesn’t equate to the prevention of family emergencies. Talk to the family before you leave. Have a plan.
What if I die? / Well, then there really wouldn’t be anything to worry about, would there?

An examination of the fears we hold illuminates this important point: Our fears are not Fact. Nor are they Foregone Conclusions.

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And what about my other latent fears that haven’t had enough air time recently? The fear of regret. The fear of living with What Ifs. The fear of settling back into a too-comfortable life that doesn’t propel progress. Aren’t these more valid fears worthy of consideration?

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To thrive, the Stoics believe constant exposure to our fears allows us to prepare for them. They espouse practicing or at least visualizing the materialization of the worst. “The man who has anticipated the coming of troubles takes away their power when they arrive,” said Seneca.

Mentally going through what could happen allows me a prepared response. So, I do as much as I can. I grab myself a fully changeable airline ticket, good medical insurance, a hefty stock of vitamins and supplements, and a WHO-certified vaccination card. I do walk-throughs with my family about what to do in case of emergencies back home. I keep travel plans wide open and entirely flexible. I do contingency planning with staff. I write my will.

Then I take a deep breath and go forth.

Because if I am to flourish in a time of extreme uncertainty, I need a radical reframing.
I could choose to view this as committing suicide for a man. Instead, I choose to see it as recommitting to courage. For me.

Light and Shadow

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Hate is a strong word.  So, I will say:  I really, really, REALLY dislike Aprils.  They make me very uncomfortable.

I postulate that it is because as a toddler, my extroverted mother threw introverted little me a birthday party.  Since my birthday falls at the end of April, the entire month was about me (or more accurately, my party) — the cake, the decor, my dress.  My mother moved on from party planning hence, but she left a little twisted psyche in her wake.  April became the month I turn the spotlight on myself.

Every April, I unconsciously put myself on stage for appraisal; I inspect the physical changes and contemplate what is ahead.  And every April, I am fraught with melancholy and dread.  

On my 7th birthday, for example, I knew I was entering what Catholics call the the age of reason, and despaired that I was no longer a child of God (did I mention twisted psyche?).  At 11, with the onset of my period and a morphing chest, I braced myself for the implications of womanhood, motherhood, and girlfriendhood (not necessarily in that order).  Every year in my 30s, I worried about the mounting loss of coolness or pick-up-a-guy-at-a-bar-ability. And now in midlife, I fret over the loss of any relevance in society and, more importantly, any control over a softening midsection.  

Thus, my deep dislike for Aprils.  They illuminate change and impermanence.  And the past two Aprils have been especially intense reminders of mortality.

Over the years, I’ve coped in various ways — distractions; being grateful; taking care of my health.  But I come back, April after April, to my ever aging body and the temporal nature of everything I know and love. And year after year, I am felled.

Two birthdays and a full year in lockdown, however, has carried with it a gift.  With the dearth of distractions and the incessant reminder of our temporality, I am forced to do nothing but Stay.  To learn to sit and soften to the inevitability of aging and impermanence.  

More often than not, it is a biyatch. And more often than not, I fail to rid myself of the angst.

BUT BUT BUT.  There have been moments, rare MAGICAL moments, when I am able to turn off the spotlight on the graying hair and the shaky future, and allow them simply to recede into the shadows.

Rumi says:

Forget the future.

I’d worship someone who could do that.

On the way you may want to look back, or not.

But if you can say, There’s nothing ahead,

there will be nothing there.

In these rare moments, when I am able to forget the future, when I take it off center stage and place it with trust at the feet of the One that is much larger than I am, I know all will be well. In the deepest way — in aging, in sickness, in loss — nothing is ever lost. And in these extraordinary magical April moments, I touch peace.  

Gone Wild

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[An open letter to my family]
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My Dear Siblings,

I hereby resign from the position of Unofficially Appointed Responsible Member of the Family. It has been an honor to have served in this capacity, which began when Mom handed me a wad of cash on her way to the airport and said “Keep your siblings alive while we’re away.” I will have you know that while I had the desire AND the power to only buy Chocolate Mallows, I bought chicken. Just so that you stayed alive.

I was 11 then. I’ve continued to be sensible since.

Through the years, I turned off the lights when you couldn’t be bothered to, I picked up the crumbs you dropped, I wrote the corresponding apology letters for your offenses. More recently, I started managing the family budget and payments. I hired the accountants and lawyers. I file, organize, plan. Remind, rearrange, prepare.

While you, my dear siblings, remain oblivious to the tedium. I can’t blame you. If I had a sister like me, I would do the same.

So, while you somersault carefree into the proverbial ocean, I watch wistfully from afar, tax returns in hand.

But today, my self-worth is drawing the line. She is demanding that I stop acting solely out of a sense of duty; stop being a martyr when nobody is asking me to be one. She is reminding me that life is too precious to buy the chicken. There must be something in it for me than just fulfillment of obligation — pleasure maybe, or a fun challenge, or proper compensation.

So meanwhile, I will start taking cues from you, my dear siblings.
I, too, will jump WILDLY into the waters — I may decide to keep the lid OFF the toothpaste. I might chomp into flakey croissant while striding over a carpet. I may even play an inordinate amount of golf just for the hell of it. Or buy a pet on a whim. Or even be late for a meeting AND zone out halfway through!

I’ll be unrecognizable, I warn you. Just you wait. I can’t.

Respectfully,
Me

Silence

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Silence is Complicity, they say.

There is pressure to be vocal, to express solidarity, and to aid in the fight against the socio-economic structures that perpetuate racial injustice.

There is that loud call to rabble-rouse.

But in all this, there is also a place for Silence.

Because it is through silence that we recognize our ignorance. It is with silence that we bow our heads and concede “I didn’t fully comprehend what you were going through.”

It is also through silence that we are able to cure this blindness. When we are quiet, we can listen and we can learn.

It is only in silence that we can hear our own unconscious biases. When we are still, we discover how our minds react to whom our children play with, how it determines whom we are willing to go on dates with. When we are quiet, we can observe how we choose the neighborhoods we live in, whom we hire, and how we unconsciously pass all these biases to the next generation.

It is in silence that we can pick apart these prejudices and incite a change that emanates from ourselves.

And it is with silence that we step aside and give the full vast floor to the voices that deserve to finally be heard.

I would love to hear what you think. Let me know in the comment section below.

original photo by https://www.pexels.com/@rickyrecap

Sheer Miracle

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He’s a veritable promdi (provincial kid) with vivid childhood memories of cavorting in the river and being circumcised under a tree. She’s a bona fide city mouse with memories of traveling the world with her cosmopolitan mother.
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He’s a history enthusiast who knows every battle line in every theater of WW2. She’s a former history teacher (and Dept Head) who can barely tell the difference between Jose Rizal and Napoleon.
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He is an introvert academic who graduated top of his classes and got into the best schools. She is an extrovert non-academic with 100% attendance at all parties.
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He is an affectionate softie who believes in the power of ALWAYS holding hands. She expresses warmth through text.
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He leaves most everything to fate and trusts in life’s unfolding. She has a will so powerful that it submits life itself into compliance.
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He is a dreamer with his head sometimes caught in the clouds. She is a realist with a gaze fixed on the ground for any dog poop or for any treasure.
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He is very big picture. She is details, logistics, the machine that keeps the family alive and fed.
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He is going stir-crazy in quarantine. She is absolutely thriving.
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The secret to this marriage of opposites — as we, their kids and witnesses, conclude over and over — is 5% love and hard work, and 95% sheer miracle.
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Happy 49th, parentals! We pray for endless love and magic!

Crisis and Freedom

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This time each year, I usually escape into a solo trip to fill my seemingly insatiable appetite for silence, and solitude, and freedom.

This year, I find myself in just about the EXACT opposite situation — locked down in my childhood home with my parents (and baby sister). If there’s one thing I am learning in this adventure, it’s this: all that childhood trauma you thought you’ve successfully namaste’d out of your life while living away? They were hibernating until the time you decide to quarantine with your parents. Then they fully activate.

It’s easy to be zen yogi when you live alone. Or at least on your own terms. But back under the parents’ roof?

A word, a gesture will be enough to trigger your childhood fears or teenage angst. A comment will conjure up those times you were convinced you were going to be put up for adoption.

But the difference is now, you have more options available than just the pavlovian response. You have the agency to disassociate yourself from the trigger. You possess the wisdom to take a breath, the space to examine your feelings, and the freedom to google “can parents be adopted?”. (adult adoption apparently is a thing). (Just putting it out there).

Oh Tong and Daisy (and Lex), you do not offer an ounce of silence or solitude these days, but you do provide endless opportunities to choose how to respond to all your triggers. For these incessant exercises in freedom, I am grateful. Thank you for being my quarantine tribe.

But I’m still sending you my shrink bill when this is all over.

Note: this map is neither here nor there. Just an expression of how much I miss traveling, and that includes travel to the corner grocer.

In Memoriam

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We will get through this. As proven time and again, mankind will overcome this struggle as he has done before — over wars, plagues, natural calamities. This pandemic will be no different. We will find a cure or a vaccine soon enough, and we will be through this.

All of it will be behind us.

That is my worry for myself: that all this will be behind me. Including the sadness I am feeling over the countless deaths left in the wake of the pandemic.

I know my capacity to forget this experience. I can return to a neo-normal life and designate the sadness and anxiety I currently feel to the corners of my subconscious. My memory can easily re-characterize this pandemic as the pleasant time I cocooned with family and conquered my reading list.

And what a waste all this would have been.

Man and Mortality

Man has a peculiar relationship with death. For the most part, he tends to ignore her. He walks around convinced of his invulnerability. When illness or danger befalls him, however, mortality takes over his mind. Death becomes acute and all-consuming. Then, again, the moment man overcomes the danger, death immediately reverts into a remote theoretical concept. It can’t happen to me. How we so easily forget.

It is hard to grasp the idea of our own mortality. When corona struck, and the news of mounting deaths became inescapable, I was devoured by fear and anxiety. Corona reminded me that death plays no favorites, and I became keenly aware of my impotence against her.

As soon as we got over the 14-day quarantine period uneventfully, the threat of death receded and I automatically slipped back into my invincibility. With each additional day of security in lockdown, I believed less and less in my own death.

Of course, all hubris. The great reminders of the pandemic are these two immutable truths: Death comes for us all. And she comes when she wants.

Meditation on Death

As tragic as it is to lose countless lives is to emerge from this pandemic missing the opportunity to change our perspective on death. French philosopher, Montaigne, said, “Let us deprive death of its strangeness . . . Let us frequent it, let us get used to it; let us have nothing more often in mind than death . . . We do not know where death awaits us, so let us wait for it everywhere.”

Reflecting on mortality is a practice that has been advocated for centuries. Ancient Egyptians would bring out a skeleton during festivities as a reminder to enjoy because death can come at any moment. Roman generals being celebrated for their military victories had slaves continually whisper in their ear ‘Memento Mori. Remember, you are mortal’ to keep perspective. As an extension, Stoics carry memento mori tokens, Buddhists meditate on mortality.

I am trying to do the same during this quarantine. Instead of turning away from news stories of death, I sit with them. I read about the lives of the lost, think about how stealthily and suddenly the virus took over. I think about what the victims might have experienced, what belabored breathing might feel like. I think about what it might have felt like to die alone. I think about death when I am emotionally triggered, or when I run out of patience. But I also think about death when I’m happy, when i’m having a nice meal with family, or a good workout. I talk about death with family and friends. I remember my impermanence daily.

Meditating on mortality does not have to be labored or oppressive. The practice can be light and joyful, particularly when we realize that we are all on the same wave moving us forward — death ceases to be a ‘goodbye’ but a ‘see you again’. By having her continuously in mind, death becomes a little less strange, a little less scary. Mostly, she becomes a guiding spirit.

Mozart told his father, “I have made myself so thoroughly acquainted with this good and faithful friend of man, that not only has its image no longer anything alarming to me, but rather something most peaceful and consolatory. . . I never lie down at night without thinking that I may be no more before the next morning dawns. . . . I daily thank my Creator for such a happy frame of mind, and wish from my heart that every one of my fellow-creatures may enjoy the same.”

My hope is that this great reminder is not left behind me after this pandemic. Should I be fortunate to see the other side, I hope the wisdom of death’s inevitability and her unknowable timing would have seeped into my bones and integrated into my every thought and action. So that I live the rest of my days relishing the gift of each morning; reordering my priorities; embracing all that I am given — the joys and the pains; hugging my loved ones; letting go of my ego and resentments; forgetting my attachments; and laughing hard. To succeed would be to honor all those whose lives have been recently taken by this new and faithful friend, death.

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I would love to hear your thoughts. How are you all making out in these times? Please comment in the section below.

Original photo by Free Nature Stock from Pexels

Numbers

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We’re all bound to get it, you say.
Eight out of ten people will fall ill.

But even then, you say, we’ll be fine.
The numbers show
Eighty percent of cases are mild,
Plus, of our age, less than half a percent perish.
We will be fine.

How cavalier, I say,
for you to speak for just one body.
Your one singular body.

Because for many of us,
who live with the elderly,
and who attend to the vulnerable,
our bodies are not just our singular bodies.

For many of us,
our bodies are entwined
by a breath, by a cough
to other bodies.

So, the numbers you tout do not apply to this body.

This body is as old as the oldest in my care:
eighty one.
It is as pounded as the most vulnerable:
three bouts with cancer.
There is, therefore,
zero percent margin of error,
and one hundred percent terror.

These are my numbers.

But even then, I fervently pray,
that you are right.
That we will be fine.

Broken

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Our world is broken. And like a broken leg that needs to heal, we are being asked, through the lockdowns that are being imposed in some countries, to allow our world to heal.
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Sure, any break is a shock to the system. One moment, we’re training hard; the next moment, we’re on the floor with a snapped bone, and life, for the foreseeable future, is rendered entirely different.
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As such, our minds struggle to perceive the sudden new reality. It either wants to grasp on to the former unbroken state, or fast-forward prematurely to the healed state. Our minds insist on living the life it has known. But anyone who’s had a broken leg knows that if we ignore what is broken, if we ignore the requisite transition time, we pay the consequences.
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The good thing is we are no strangers to change. Transition is our default state, always drifting from shore to shore — hungry to comfortable, young to old, healthy to sick. We know how to adapt, albeit with a mental lag.
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However, a mental shift NOW is IMPERATIVE. We need to finally accept that our world is broken, and that it will be a while until it heals. We cannot insist on latching on to a normal life — with “innocuous” dinners out, happy hours, brunches with friends, and gym visits — without paying the consequences.
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Because absolutely NOTHING about this new reality is normal. Every time we step out of the house, every day we require employees to go to work (in non-essential industries), we increase the risk of virus spread, of hitting the vulnerable and elderly, of burdening our hospitals, of further endangering our healthcare workers.
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We shouldn’t take the cue from our governments who are struggling to grasp the reality (here’s looking at you, US and UK). We need to think for ourselves. Because in this pandemic, if one country screws up, we are aaaall screwed. So, let us settle into this necessary transition, get comfortable in our homes, and allow the healing to happen

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#stayhomepeople