A Space for Mystery and Solitude

I had my wisdom tooth pulled out recently, and to avoid the pain of it all, I dilly dallied on the decision for a long time. The insides of my mind knocked and racked, the imagination of pain was, perhaps, greater. And so it is, with all things. I measured the future inaccurately, but I’m not hard on myself about it. Specially now, when I spend a huge part of my time, planning my days ahead, charting certainty in the calendar so that I’m not caught off guard by a day that’s wearing denim overalls and a white t-shirt waiting for me to tell it what to do. This kind of planning seems to be the mainstay of my adult life, and I don’t mind it in the slightest.

But I write secretly in my journal — what of mystery, what of the space for the unknown?

We, as a human race, seem to know everything these days. But I’m thinking about a God, which might look at us, as we do to ants, and think of the things we might be able to do had we not so much certainty.

There’s a story about Prophet Solomon (Prophet Sulaiman PBUH) and an ant where he asks an ant how much food it requires to sustain a year. The ant says it requires two grains of wheat and Prophet Solomon puts the ant in a container with two grains of wheat. After the year has passed, he checks the container and the ant has eaten only one grain saving the rest. Prophet Solomon asks the ant why it didn’t eat as much as it said. The ant responds that when I was free, I had firm faith that God would provide me with sustenance so I lived without worry and ate my fill knowing that the next day I would find something. But when I was trapped, I feared that you would forget to give me food, so I saved half just in case.

I think about this story a lot these days because of that ant. If such a small being can believe in the promise of tomorrow, in its provision from God, why can’t I?

But I search my heart and I do believe in tomorrow, I only wish it wasn’t so plainly laid out in front of us as the tracing on a cloth waiting to be stitched.

And yet, the days chug on. They take on the hue of the concentrated society I live in, the hardbound copy of Jane Eyre travels with me in the house wherever I go, its pages smell like the promises of an overgrowth, friends check in about dental work, tax filing, and data centres, parents get older and forget that thing I had said a few days ago, work continues to become a background noise that doesn’t inspire, and the streets are grey and wet and going places.

As I try to unclasp the clutches of dopamine-riddled-doomscrolling, I’m thinking about starting a zine that I would like to publish. I made some notes, leafed through some old poems, and essentially gave it less thought than I would if I made a plan for someone else. It was then that I realises I can put that kind of thought and attention to myself, to the small things I want, to the big things I want to create. Or perhaps even the experiences I want for myself (not the ones that I am told I want). Our modern day doomscrolling is an equivalent of other people telling us what to do, what to think, how to feel, and though we may have rebelled against it in analog times, we have adjusted our palate easily to these online sermons.

I notice that my writing and reflection is constricted when I spend too much time cramming myself with the media, and when I have to return to myself, silence is mandatory, space is essential. A pulling away from the whirlpool of my occupancies and standing at the shore watching the sunlight fall on the waves of my own life is needed.

The other day, I took my MacBook to a coffee shop, ordered a warm margarita croissant and a piping Vanilla Bean Latte. I sat there ate my fill, and watched a TV show in broad public light in my own time. It felt like I was taking 2 hours out of the busy days I had planned for me, but now that I think about it, it was one of the few times I was alone, doing exactly what I wanted and spending my time inside a really good story. It is this solitude that I miss, the ability to be on one’s own.

Coursing through the days, shuffling around the city, arranging the days is good work, necessary for existence, but the pushing away of certainty to allow mystery into my life is a yearning I have now. I want to create time for myself, which, I believe, is how I get to know the inner workings of my mind, and find a way for my soul to utter a sigh of living. Now that I’ve come to find a semblance of balance between want and need, between fear and possibility, between lack and enough, I want to go inward, and find what makes me feel the way it does. What else is there?

These days, as the rain beats down on my ramshackle city, I feel a deep sense of gratitude for being alive, in this wet, grey world. It is not always picturesque, the scene of the city or of my life as water pours from the broken skies, but it is sufficient.