Make January mean something else
Bongi D D M Radipati | Monday January 16, 2023 06:00
For some, it may even be the time they start to dread the increase in their age (and ours too) which is bound to happen sooner or later! To counteract this propensity to descend into self-flagellation, I ask that this year, at its beginning, we should do things differently.
For starters, let us be kind to ourselves and lay aside the embarrassment of missing the target or the plans, or the failure of our brightest star to shine in the previous year.
Why? Because in the creative process of living, in navigating life's mundanities, our faults and failures and deficiencies, carry value.
Their value is in the lessons we may learn from them, and also in the opportunity we may have, to impart those lessons to someone else as we stand back and acknowledge the sheer luck and joy of being alive in the new year.
Let January also be a time to look beyond ourselves and gaze wondrously and lovingly at nature, our life’s external machine of hope and happiness. In this month, we will continue to enjoy rain, so valuable and essential to us as a nation that by it, we greet each other, and have named our currency. At this time of the year, we have the closest we can get to a human paradise in our desert country.
We have some streams, rivers and lakes full, and at times, overflowing with water. Sometimes the shimmering rays of the sun will hit them and gently remind us that this time is our summer's midway point.
Almost everywhere, there is an abundance of greenery and a cacophony of colors of vegetation, mingling with the delightful scents of plants heavy in the air. (An aside: this alchemy of nature would be a complete sight to marvel if only we stopped spoiling it repeatedly with our trash thrown around mindlessly!) And in a month from now, once again we will be feasting daily on the resultant bounty of the earth, much of which would have required the minimum of our human effort and means but the most of the beneficence of nature. Axiomatically, we owe nature gratitude at all times, but at harvest time, for obvious reasons, even more so.
If we accept that nature encapsulates human experience, there is a high chance that in the previous year, we did what has now become our second nature. We bought new stuff and we put aside old stuff and we gave away little or nothing; in short, we accumulated things! How about we use this January to recalibrate our enthusiasm for materialism? If we could spend a little time and effort questioning if we really need to buy something; if we could donate (more) things; and if we could focus on buying (when we ultimately do) quality over quantity, this is what will happen. Immediately we will be freed from the shackles of clutter; along the way we will experience the relief of no longer keeping up with the fictional Joneses (or the real-life Kardashians!); and at the end we will be glad of the thoughtfulness of our actions as we produce minimal waste for our environment. These may appear hard to think about, and even harder to do. But accept them as your relationship, actually your seduction, in which you allow your valences to take charge and lead you to a life of minimalism.
This month treat yourself to the pleasure and wisdom of reading and writing in the hot and long days of our country’s summer. This act alone, repeated daily and done beyond January, is a good habit, worthy of being copied by those around you, particularly your children, who learn by observing. In any event, please remember that the seeds of our adult imagination and erudition are sometimes planted during our youth, and it is in the language and images of our youth that we may turn to for creative inspiration in later life.
So, against classical music's melody and riffs, or some other music that doesn’t draw attention to itself, pick up that book and notepad, sit down and subject yourself to the discipline of learning something. If you do this habitually, soon enough you will realize that a bookish life can be a fulfilling one, anyhow you look at it. You will also avoid what is often said, more in mockery than pity - it is hard for a knowledgeable person to understand the depth of another person's ignorance!
Finally, this January, do something supposedly frivolous and absurd, perhaps even bourgeois: start and maintain a hobby. While we often claim that we are painfully and unbearably busy these days, the hard truth is that we are not. We have simply misapplied our free time. Social media, television, Netflix, bar hopping, and others, are the places where we waste our free time.
This is time ripe for a hobby, which by definition is the doing of something, really anything, that truly interests, inspires and enlivens us outside our regular job. The benefits of a hobby need not detain us here, it being accepted that a hobby can, among others, have a positive effect on our family time, friendships, regular work and even extra earning capacity as a gig. A long-time friend, retired, over 79 years old and in the village fixes old trucks (he too owns one), as a hobby. He will tinker with each one of them until he can get it running. He is not a qualified mechanic. But because he always gets them running, I realize that his enthusiasm, curiosity and experience have made him almost as good as one who has received specialized training in motor mechanics. To novices, he explains his methodology of fixing them, with excitement but little by little, much like he would urge a drunk person to walk safely, by easing them through their paces until they are able to walk unaided. If this octogenarian can have a hobby, so can we! Actually, I think he provides us with a one-person free education on that brilliant choice for January.
Compliments of the new year!
*Radipati is a regular Mmegi contributor