Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.
Johann Wolfgang van Goethe
The above quote from Goethe was the first of three triggers that inspired me to begin this blog.
I came across these words during a time when I was just emerging from a dark phase of my life. I had two interesting jobs. I was dancing, making new friends, dating, reading, exercising, and journaling regularly, but I felt something was still missing.
For over two years, I had been jotting down titles for articles that I wanted to write about, but I could not find it in me to move beyond the titles. They remained a bulleted list.
There were a number of stories that were begging to be told, but words were eluding me. I knew they would be hard stories to write, and I didn’t have the courage to go near them. Besides, there was that nagging thought: Who would want to read stories of my struggles? Would I still write them if no one was interested?
It was not surprising that I had hit writer’s block, given the dramatic changes over three years when all things fell apart. During that dark phase, in a fit of self-loathing and despair, I tore up everything I had ever written – my diaries, letters from friends, letters to family, morning pages – that I had carefully filed away over three decades. Gone. Just like that.
It took me a long time to start writing again, and even then I could only write my journal. I was struggling to write at work. I found it hard to focus on mathematics and well-being, while I sensed there was something far more important, that was seeking expression.
When I read the above words from Goethe about a month ago, something stirred in me. Life, perhaps? I realized some things mattered more than others, but I was not prioritizing them. I was focused on earning a livelihood, and however important and urgent that was, especially after my divorce, it was not what truly mattered to me. I was drifting, biding my time, waiting for one year to roll into the next, hoping to white-knuckle my way through life.
I knew I wanted to do something that was mine. Something that was an expression of my life force, of who I was. Something I would do simply for the joy of it. I just didn’t know what it was.
So I began to think about That Which Matters.
During this time, my three children came to be with me for about ten days, and we had a whale of a time together. We did extreme adventure sports, including ziplining and paragliding. We locked ourselves into a prison and tried to escape from it. We ate ice cream sandwiches and chaat on the streets. We greeted the New Year on Marine Drive along with perhaps a million others! We also watched two movies – Avatar 2 and Wakanda Forever. Despite being action movies, both of them had storylines that dwelt on family relationships, something that struck a chord in me. In Avatar 2, Jake Sully says:
A father protects. It’s what gives him meaning.
Jake Sully, Avatar 2
This is a traditional and narrow definition of a father’s role and not something that I would have been terribly impressed by a couple of years ago, but given how I was feeling distanced from my erstwhile approach to parenting, those words made me stop and reflect again on what it meant to be a father.
I felt a bit sheepish about gleaning wisdom on parenting from an Avatar movie, of all things, but it helped! It reminded me of how fiercely protective I felt when my daughter was born (“like a tigress”, I remember writing to a friend), and subsequently after the amazing birth experience of my twin boys.
Now that I was living away from my children in another city, I had a different role from the daily parenting that I had been used to, and I needed to create new ground for them to thrive, even in my absence.
Beyond my obvious responsibilities as a parent, I felt an urgent need to create experiences to build memories from, that we would cherish many years later. The bonds forged from these experiences would be our protection from a world that I found hard to live in. It would be our warm blanket against the inevitable cold winters of life that all of us must weather.
Creating this cocoon for my children so they in turn might face the world with greater confidence, skill, and love than I have managed, would give me meaning as a father. It would be worth the rest of my time on this earth.
So there was my second trigger for That Which Matters.
He talks about the inevitable decline in our professional lives by middle age, and suggests that the only way forward is if:
You can accept that what got you to this point won’t get you into the future – that you need to build some new strengths and skills.
Arthur C. Brooks, From Strength to Strength
That Which Matters is my first step in that direction, as I stand on the cusp of the second half of my life, ready to walk into an unknown future by writing about that which matters to me. It is both the means and the end, the process and the content, it is the act of writing as well as what I choose to write about.
To begin with, I want to explore my thoughts on books, songs and talks that have impacted me deeply with their universal and eternal ideas. They would largely be on, but not limited to, education, parenting, relationships, philosophy, and spirituality. So I hope what I write about will be That Which Matters (To All).
My thoughts on these eternal ideas, interspersed with narratives from my life, will be fleeting and ephemeral. They will be like the finger pointing to the moon. Forget the finger. Do look at the moon.
Welcome again to That Which Matters – Ephemeral thoughts on eternal ideas.
Featured Image: Photo by Everton Vila on Unsplash
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