everything heals
praise, insurance, laughter, recovery, happy as kings, life-changing books, Peru, non-duality, nothing wrong, perspective, and pets.
Hi there!
Thank you for joining me.
I hope you are good and your week has been kind so far. And if it hasn’t, I promise you will be able to make your way through it. Remember, the dark is always up against the force of life.
I want to share three thoughts today,
The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote in his journal we now know as Meditations: “Neither worse than not better is a thing made by being praised.” Even though I am not always able to appreciate this idea, I take a bow. No matter how much we love the flower or hate the cactus, both remain as they are. Lotuses bloom out of water-logged ditches. Even the most melodious cuckoo kicks out the crow’s eggs to lay hers. No one can go against their nature. Then does it not make sense to stop being hungry for appreciation, go on living, and take whatever comes our way ever so lightly?
2. Once, I fell on an Indonesian island. I was driving a two-wheeler on a torn-up, potholed road. Stones were strewn around all over it. My partner sat behind me. When the scooter started going down, I realized I couldn’t stop it. I saw my face reaching closer to the ground. My legs and arms brushed against the stones.
I checked myself for the damage. The first thing I saw was my knee. It had a hole. The red, naked knee bone stared at me through the gap. I had deep scratches on my arms, shoulders, and palms, too. Fear of permanent damage shot up inside me. Like someone had injected that fear.
My partner was right there. His knee and arm had brushed too but it wasn’t that bad. He saw the hole. His face went pale but he didn’t say anything. We sat on the ground for a little time. I thought I won't be able to stand up. What if my bone was broken?
I looked for the lump of mass that must have once filled the hole. My partner said it had been scrubbed off by the stones.
Wailing, I called for help. But there was no one. I expected a car to show up. But everything was quiet. My partner said we would go to the restaurant on the main road we had seen about ten minutes ago and ask for help. He cleaned the wound with a fresh leaf and tied it with his handkerchief.
I could get up. I climbed up the scooter somehow and off he drove. The guy at the hotel asked me to show him the wound. I liked that he asked. He called a taxi that drove us to the hospital. It took 50 mins.
Those were some long fifty minutes. My partner kept convincing me that my knee was okay. That the bone had been untouched.
At the hospital, they brought a stretcher to drive me in. But instead of lying down, I sat up. One of the nurses laughed. I laughed with him. No one says we can't laugh if we are crying.
A few people surrounded me. I told them about the accident. They said many accidents happen on that island but the Indonesian government didn’t do anything. The new travelers didn’t know and they rented scooters as they did on Bali island. But on that island scooters shouldn’t be allowed, they said.
I was going to get stitches. Anesthesia had already started working. The skin was being cut. It was being stitched. But I only felt little nudges. I had been screaming with pain before. But when I saw the needle going in and out of my knee, I started singing Hindi songs. The oldest ones from the 50s and the 60s I like so much. Kishore Kumar. Rafi. Asha Bhonsle. I laughed and sang and sang and laughed.
While my wounds were being cleaned, I rested my head on a nurse’s shoulder. She was a thin girl with a bright smile. Only visible from the corners of her mask. Her eyes shone, too. The emergency nurse was relieved when I stopped screaming. Then they attended to my partner. He didn’t let them touch him until they had fixed me up. He was not in as much pain but he was hurt, too.
As we waited for our guesthouse hosts to pick us up, the throbbing returned. Waves of pain rose from each part of my body. And then I couldn’t differentiate between the source and the sink of the hurt anymore. My knee had become a dense and deep dollop of pain. I told myself that it would remain so for a long while.
By the time the hosts arrived, two-three accident cases had come to the hospital in front of us. And then off we went to the guest house. I had to take more painkillers but I was peaceful. We were alright.
After two days, my partner returned to India. He had joined me for the first two weeks of my indefinite trip to Southeast Asia.
I didn’t have to bear the costs of the medicines and the hospital bills. I was insured. Before my partner left, he bought me an Indonesian sim card, took out cash, and put me in a nice little village home in Bali. The host was going to drive me to and fro from the clinic.
I realized I didn’t have to worry about anything. I had enough insurance.
Sitting on the balcony outside my room, I wrote a lot. Coconuts and palms swayed in the distance and kept me company. Below in the frangipani-canopied courtyard, the Balinese household bustled. The family gave every guest breakfast and for other meals, I walked out to the small home-run food stall just outside the house. Before the shower, I tied my knee with plastic and hoped the stitches wouldn't get wet.
Slowly I recovered. I started walking a little further every day. When Balinese men saw me limping on the road with a sock around my knee, they called out, yelled, and tried to get my attention. As if it was all a fun game. But I didn’t look at them. I walked on to the house of a new friend I had met while walking around. And together we went on many new adventures. Instead of limping, I started walking straight up and driving by myself.
After two weeks, the doctor said my stitches could be opened. The wound had left a black and red scar. I would keep it covered for many months but it was healing well.
And I learned that everything can heal. Voids can fill up. If we keep singing, laughing, smiling, hoping, crying, and loving, eventually we all recover. But we have to give ourselves a chance. And we also need little insurance. Some we get by paying money and the rest we get by holding someone else’s hands.
And what about those losses we can never recuperate from? They will cover up enough and fill up enough and hurt less and less. Not even pain stands a chance in front of the passing of time.
“There’s only one rule you need to remember: laugh at everything and forget everybody else! It sounds egotistical, but it’s actually the only cure for those suffering from self-pity.” Anne Frank, the little girl who could tell the important from the insignificant.
3. I found this on Twitter. “Understand: we are all too afraid - of offending people, of stirring up conflict, of standing out from the crowd, of taking bold action.” — Robert Greene
“I say let us stir them up a little. Swim upstream. Walk into the wind. Clear the foliage to make a path. Even the underdog can lead a pack of wild wolves. But you got to trust yourself. Believe. Work. And don't compare your journey with anyone else's.” — Yours Truly
For this week’s letter,
Some of my writing,
quotes I love,
things to read,
things to watch,
and
travel tips.
Past Articles I’ve Just Renewed
21 Books to Change Your Life
By a life changing book, I don’t necessarily mean a bestseller.
By life changing books I mean those in which the most obvious things have been said in the simplest form; or those that tell the history of life not as how people want us to know but how it happened; or those that show life writhing out of the mouth of suffering with full force; or those that remind us of adventures we had as little children that give sense to our today, too; or those that seem long and convoluted but essentially they talk about things we have always ignored; or those that make us reconsider if the thing is worth beating ourselves about; or those that make us look at life with a child’s eyes again; or those that make us ask questions we were too scared to even think about; or those that unravel the science behind all this and help us be a little less clueless; or those that give us hope that change is nothing but little things done every day; or those that show us compassion and tell us we are okay as who we are.
Here are the 21 best books that made my life what it is. (+ some more from recent years).
Click to know the books. Or Pocket for later.
Backpacking Peru [2022] : One Guide to Rule Them All
This not just a travel guide. This article is all I saw, learned, and did in Peru during my six weeks in the country. Apart from my journey in the country, it has the best places in Peru, the coolest things to do, the must-have foods, and also the geography, history, and politics of Peru.
Read the guide now. Or Pocket for later.
Quotes I Love
These are some of my favorite from the article I shared above.
“In dreams begin responsibilities.” — William Butler Yeats
“When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.” — Anais Nin
"Ultimately there is light and love and intelligence in this universe. And we are it, we carry that within us, it’s not just something out there, it is within us and this is what we are trying to re-connect with." — Tenzin Palmo
“I am is not just me. I am is all of you, too.” — Yours Truly
What I’ve Been Reading
I’ve been reading short stories, books, articles, and so much more. I can’t possibly list all what I have read in the past week so I’m putting down the things I found most relevant and worthwhile.
Beautiful reads from the week,
This is just a Tweet, but it says so much I think it deserves to be in the Read section: “What will you beat yourself up about today, with your one wild and precious life?” — Llana Masad
Why we should spend some quiet time alone every day by Ideas.Ted — A beautiful meditation on the need for nature, quiet, and sitting by ourselves doing nothing.
Just since 1970, human beings have destroyed more than 30 percent of forests and the marine ecosystem, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature.
Decades ago, when I was that boy walking home from school through the woods, following turtles as they slowly lumbered down a dirt path, wasting hours as I watched tadpoles in the shallows or the sway of water grasses in the wind, I was free. We cannot return to that world, nor would we necessarily want to, but we can create some of that space within our world today. We can create a preserve within our own minds.
Another great piece by Ideas.Ted — The right way to be introspective (yes, there’s a wrong way) — There’s a reason this newsletter is called Looking Inwards. I am always focusing on self-reflection to be better. But I have to admit this is the first time I have come upon the realization what if we are understanding ourselves all wrong. Or what if looking inwards is doing us more damage than good? A must-read.
Research suggests that self-analyzers tend to have more anxiety, less positive social experiences and more negative attitudes about themselves.
Buddhist scholar Tarthang Tulku uses an apt analogy: when we introspect, our response is similar to a hungry cat watching mice. We eagerly pounce on whatever “insights” we find without questioning their validity or value.
What if there’s nothing wrong with you? by Ideas.Ted — Instead of asking what is wrong with me, have you ever put it like that? Do Try.
The author of the book What if There’s Nothing Wrong With You, Susan Henkels says this question is about pressing pause on your inner critic and making “a choice to let go of all the ways you’ve made yourself wrong.”
One way to calm an anxious mind: Notice when you’re doing OK by Ideas.Ted — This is my favorite read this week. The idea is so obvious, yet so elusive. No matter what we are worrying ourselves about, what’s going on around us, or what we are anticipating, inside we are all breathing, living, and sustaining. And that should be enough most of the times.
To keep our ancestors alive, our brains evolved an ongoing internal trickle of unease. It’s the little whisper of worry that keeps you scanning your inner and outer worlds for signs of trouble.
This background of unsettledness and watchfulness is so automatic to most people that we can forget it’s there.
But underneath your desires and activities is an aliveness and an awareness that is doing fine this second.
Why People End Up Parenting Badly by the School of Life — We all know our childhood dictates who we become. But it doesn’t have to shape our children’s lives, too. A must read for those taking care of the little ones.
We will be properly grown up when we are in a position to give our offspring the childhood we deserved, not the childhood we had.
Am I Fat? An Answer From History by the School of Life —This article emphasizes that “beauty is all about perspective” through paintings from the eras gone by. You can test the theory by traveling to a different country or even into a new state.
Judgements about who and what is considered attractive keep changing, sometimes very radically. A beauty in one era can be thought entirely plain in another. One century’s iconically bewitching figure may elicit only a puzzled shrug a generation later. This raises an intriguing possibility: that we might not be so much ‘ugly’ or ‘mousy’ or ‘fat’ as ignored by a set of rather partial, hasty and unimaginative current definitions of beauty. We may have nothing more to hate than the way that our own age has taught itself to see.
The last but not the least — Our Pets May Actually Love Us, Research Shows by The Atlantic — The hormone that is released in us when we are with our loved ones or when we feel love toward someone is also found in our pets when they are with us. Fascinating.
What I’ve Been Watching/Listening
that’s worth mentioning
What if There’s Nothing Wrong With You by Susan Henkels — The Ted talk that inspired the article above.
And for all my Wanderlusters.
As I have shared many photos above and this newsletter is already long, here is just one more.
make what you want of it.
Thank you for reading.
I hope like the Pondicherry rains your week is cool and breezy, too. Take good care of yourselves :)
Let me know what you think about this newsletter. Just press reply.
Yours,
Priyanka
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