M is for Magic
All the letters are, if we put them together properly. We can make magic with them, and I hope, even a few surprises.
Without me noticing it, a month has already passed by since the day I decided to write daily ( well, I try as much as I can ) on this blog. It was a mix match between diary and journal, but it’s more on the journal side. Looking back, I did detail my life quite well – the struggles, the joys, the steps taken to reach whatever it is I’m searching for.
Yesterday, it was one of those significant moment that I think journaling has helped me. I might have found one major breakthrough in my quest for the meaning of life.
I took my partner’s comment about my love for studying quite solemnly. Why? Because according the Alain De Botton, in his essays why you will marry the wrong person he stated that our lover know us way more than we do about ourselves. I do believe so. Without him pointing that out, I’d probably spent another year or 10 more year trying to figure out what it is that I’m looking for.
So I have spent more or less the last 24 hours to think about what I called “ major breakthrough” . It seems that my life was driven by the word “ curiosity” , the urge to know what’s gonna happen next has pushed me to keep learning and moving forward.
More than that, over the year, I have perfect this skills without consciously knowing so. I study great, I study fast and very efficiently. By study fast I mean, I’m not shy to ask question, sometimes very silly questions, because to me it’s a question.
Most importantly, whatever that I learned, I immediately implement it. Be it a philosophical theory, a language, a skills like baking or cooking, I would immediately apply it as soon as I have adequate knowledge about it. That way it will be more efficient thus faster to learn a skills.
In learning new things, I found myself completely consume in that moment. Just yesterday, I woke up with a very terrible headache. I feel so tired, probably from the hangover on Sunday. As soon as I sat down on the table, open my notebook, I forgot the world.
On the other hand, this thirst for new knowledge doesn’t come without a price. Once I knows the ins and outs of a particular topic, I immediately lose interest. I found it’s incredibly to go back to the things that I have done.
I have lived quite a few cities around the world, not a single one that I have come back too. My usual narrative was: “There are so much more new place that I want to go to”. Today, on the second thought, it might be because I have read that chapter, the New York chapter, the Helsingor chapter, … and no matter how good or bad it may have been, it is still a closed chapter. There’s no reason to go back and re-read that chapter.
That may explain why I felt incredibly sad every time I left a place, because I know, I will not come back and live here again, it will not be the same like it is now. It’s sort of like a kiss of good bye that will never return.
In the book Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly Ph.D, one of my most favorite book this year, the author mentioned that we should find Flow in each and every activity that we are doing every day ( what does Flow mean, please read the book) . What he meant was, for each activity/ relationship we should focus and continue to find the new challenge, otherwise it will become dead. We will not achieve enjoyment.
More importantly, in the final chapter, he mentioned, we also need to find an overall flow, otherwise, our life will be a chaos of different bits of flow. I call it a theme. I have been searching for this theme.
I might have found it today. Perhaps, the theme of my life is Self-Development. I want to be a better person than I was yesterday and the day before yesterday. Instead of taking the interest of the topic outside, I shall focus on myself. My life long project perhaps is My Very Own Self.
Maybe. We’ll never know the exact answer
“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World