Generous

“The hour is striking so close above me,

So clear and sharp,

That all my senses ring with it.

I feel it now:there’s a power in me

To grasp and give shape to my world.

I know that nothing has ever been real

Without my beholding it,

All becoming has needed me.

My looking ripens things

And they come toward me,to meet and be met.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Hours

Oh, how I missed being at my desk on a sunny Sunday where all I can hear are the boats, tree trimming, birds and silence really….. The only reason I wonder if there is a sound or what would that sound be is because the houses on this “nutshell” hill are so silent…With time and attention I am now able to distinguish among very few sounds with a specialist precision- the helicopter(sure this is not something hard to be noticed, as there are plenty around here though), the bus, the boat, the neighbour downstairs ( might be 2am) , the neighbours next door came home, the dogs went out for a walk( it’s 10pm)….Time landmarks. Silence is not silence anymore except when you compare the village with the big city. We just get immersed in a surround sound mystique and start discovering newness or familiarity.

I had few different directions for my Sunday post and multiple different notes or quotes, one more beautiful and touching than the other. Notes on notebooks, notes jotted on post-its, notes on my phone, notes still forming at the back of my mind, notes taken during the silent disco yoga in the park yesterday shaking up with life and tremendous joy.

This sharing might not always be as punctual as I wished to be simply because life happens. Whenever I travel back home to see my family,it becomes more and more visible that life takes over at a different pace there. We fall into a much bigger puzzle and the days simply build up faster. Including the fact that whatever I might dare to plan around that just dismantles by the minute and a new reset is needed everyday.

Both mum and myself got a cold and were pretty much glued to our beds for about 5 days. It was something easy at the end and did not take a massive toll on us except that we did not “accomplish”what we had originally in mind. I had various other personal goals, books to finish, papers to write and submit for my studies….oh and what we did accomplish was to spend 5 days immersed with each other’s weakness, taking care of each other. Also watching each other resilience and push to get better sooner than later.None of us surrenders easy to being “helpless” or “sick”. Ok, yes, we need to sleep it off, but boy oh boy- neither our hearts or minds accepted that!

The reason for saying all that is definitely not for attracting “sorry” or additional worries - oh no, I have been reminded of that multiple and multiple and zillion times. ”Please stop worrying about me so much!” …..

The reason for setting the context above is because I want to talk today about generosity and the big love that caries within.

If I need to name one thing only, one, that my family and particularly my mum taught tremendously at every minute- it is generosity. While also this would be my starting point here I would like to ask you to wonder where generosity met you, at which age you started noticing it, do you keep noticing it, do you feel the feather like touch on a daily basis. It is here - so ever present.

Let me pinpoint few takes from the past couple weeks that still mark deeply my heart.

I was sharing my frustration with mum about some poor customer service experience or things I pretty much did not understand in the ever changing responses or attitude of the sales rep…… no matter how my story was evolving( over more than one day) mum kept her generous glasses on and she was only able to always and consistently find a way to explain the reason why this happened. “Maybe she just had a bad day”. “I am thinking that she did not understand well and we just have to talk to her again” “ Who knows what has happened that day, maybe she was busy and tired”.

I was not really even harsh in my reactions. I was really wondering the same but since the transaction was related to my mum too I had to relate my experience and the latest news on the matter. The fact that we had 5 days to be confined in the same small place, our apartment, no garden this time, no dogs outside, no chickens to feed like in the country house….. it also made me immensely proud to be her daughter and see the traits she has built up in myself and my siblings. We are made generous.We are made to see and notice humanity before everything else. I have been “accused” many times in my life when listening other people’s stories of complaint that I “was taking the other side” or “why was I defending everyone”. The transition I see within myself now is perhaps instead of “seeing the other people perspective too”, or “responding to the stories” in one way or another, I perhaps bend my ears more and just listen. There is so much to say in us. In our people. Known familiar or unknown.This applies to people. Or/and stories.

I could write about our family and my friend’s innate generosity for years to come and I will. Now you know at least what to expect.I do not know of a bigger ever present love.

The flowers above? My friend got them before I visited her and they were there on her kitchen table everyday. The eternal symbol of the spring, or fragile beauty born under the snow or cold soil, raising their heads bold and beautiful up to the sky. They always looked to me as having a shy character and yet so much of a symbol of resilience. We love them. “Ghiocei.” Snowdrops.

The boeuf salad I had for breakfast at my other friend’s place because she forgot she took her coffee machine to school for the Valentine’s day events …and while she has promised a coffee, she could not really make it! So….reset. Think fast.Blink blink.Oh, I have this salad and cookies! ….She has almost had a heart attack and then recovering in silence with me while having our salads.That was more than a generous offer. Plus the wave of apologies she could not drive me to my next destination as she usually did.

Inevitably we are back to talking about food and the love that brings…. You see.There would be no other way. Let me lay this dialogues just as simple and plain as possible:

“I do not want to carry a luggage with food to Hong Kong. There is plenty of cheese there too. “ I have repeated this sentence on a daily basis in very strong affirmative sentences.

“The subject says: “No food”.

“The other subject says: it is simply not possible! “

Result:

Mum: “ I really feel sad if you do not take anything.I got you these small very small rolls of goat cheese” .

Brother: “ I got you the fresh smoked cheese. And some sausages.And some cured pork loin. Is not much or heavy. “

Sister in law:” I am bringing you the firtree bark syrup / for coughing and linden tea”

My friend’s mum:”I baked you a marble cake”

Cousin” Are you home? We are bring you your Christmas gifts”

The only power you have is to open wide your heart and hands up to the sun and the sky or the stars and say “Thank you!” “Well received” “Your love is well received”

Now your choice if you shed extra tears or you are the stoic type. I know your heart is full too.

A lot of other things inspired me these past few weeks. Being back home has this intense effect of stirring up memories out of the blue.The deep blues of our internal oceans. This memory hit me on the ferry ride yesterday where a lot of magic thinking happens. Hello again beautiful city. HomeKong. As we say.

While the memory has nothing to do with blue skies,I do believe in setting the context right for any story.

It is in fact related to darkness. And an exercise of imagination I would perhaps like to invite you to take it. Many centuries ago, as a young professional and quite fresh to Hong Kong ,I have been invited to a workshop called “The Dialogue in the Dark” .It was a team building exercise where in fact the original teams joining are dispersed and you get to mingle and form new teams with people you have never met before.

I was pleased to noticed that the NGO organising this still exists in Hong Kong even today. I am not sure they are the same people or not, yet..if you are really curious about their activities and what you could learn, well you can!

https://dialogue-experience.hk/en/homepage/

(….Sorry Substack …editing the link with the link button can be unnerving sometimes)

As a debrief, this is an NGO bringing awareness to “people of differences” in this case people who cannot see and who are blind. Varied circumstances. Some of them were born with this difference.Some of them lost it later in life. Some of them lost it with aging. The facilitators were all people with this difference of course also supported by other team. There were a set of exercises we were meant to do together and raise awareness about this precious ability some of us still have “seeing”. The impact of this experience had ripple effects. I just did not know it can still reverberate and create the waves inside me even more powerful so many ages later.

The setting was as follows: there were many teams, a big hall, multiple areas and tables and we were asked to form new teams. Say hello and introduce ourselves to each other briefly as later on nothing mattered. The lights went off right away after receiving the instructions of each exercise. The first one was to build up a rainbow from wooden blocks, on a table, completely in darkness. I am not sure now if we have seen the blocks or not. We were giving some instructions and then all became dark. Pitch dark. Our senses sharpened, hearing, smelling, touching, searching frantically on the table to put together some blocks. The thing was that the entire concept dissipated -the exercise did not matter anymore, we were hit by someone else’s reality- use your other senses to create something and imagine is a rainbow. All questions came back to my mind- what if I never saw a rainbow in my life, would someone tell me in words what that it, what if I do not know the meaning of colours as I never saw one….. well, people nowadays talk about ice baths. Take a stroll in pitch dark and try to do something out of it. Your senses will be upped in no time. And is not about you anymore, is about lesson number one- once we change our perspective there is so much to unravel, to be seen or to maybe kept better hidden. Or just create a whole new world because this is all you have got.

Did we make a rainbow ? Total failure what do you expect? We have found other landmarks in us instead.

The accent fell suddenly on the deep down instincts we carry. It is a very intense experience. After which all seems too loud, too bright, too much … for those who still have our eyesight and can now view everything around us afresh.

The second exercise. Not sure how to describe it to be honest.It was indeed a century ago. We were given a rope. And we were supposed to turn it into a knot or a particular shape? Maybe knot. I think the group was relatively large maybe 8 people of so. Remember completely new people that we could not even remember all the names.

When the lights turned off and we found ourselves standing in darkness with some part of the rope in our hands….. let me tell you, because this part is what I remember clearly even now- some very strong instinct kick off. An instinct of protection, of being there for “my village”, of being in charge and ensuring that all are still within the same team, taking up on questions, checking with each of us if we understood well what we had to do…. There were two things we could control. Our voice. Checking in with the others using our voice and stepping up. I had the tendency to speak up first in a group where uncomfortable silence would overwhelm people. Our immediate neighbours, left and right. We could hold our hands, ensure we do not dissipate or mingle with other groups next to us. The funny part of all of this was that we went there as ambitious young professionals.We had our “ leadership” traits inside us. So while I was the mother hen or the sheepdog or not sure what else I boiled inside me to “protect my people”, there were other voices also raising up from inside the group, really focused sharply on the objective, to deliver the knot, or whatnot we were supposedly ask to do. So, I do remember that my voice somehow dissipated at the end and gave way to the others who insisted on achieving the target only- yet, maybe not really thinking of the group at all.

Result: forget it. They were so disappointed that our team could not deliver the perfect knot. I was disappointed because the experience in fact left a bitter taste. My reading of the team building exercises was quite different than theirs. No one to blame really .I am sure I have been in other circumstances also in the same shoes as a goal achiever. I simply did not find it fitting the purpose on all that darkness.

I would however encourage anyone to dive deeply into a circumstance that is not yours currently, complete darkness for example ,and see what this might bring up in you.

That was about an external circumstance. Short I would even say. I never imagined I could even remember all these details. But here they were - nicely tucked away waiting for the right timing.

If I may and allowed to take this even further. Sometimes we fell into such circumstance while sun is shining brightly around is and something is us eclipses it totally and for a very long time. Try to awake your senses then. It takes such a huge effort. And a village. Not very big village. Just as a nutshell I live in now. The village however is generous. Resilient. Present. Snow no snow. Helping you to rise up and grow beautifully.

Namaste!

A last note. There is this book” One Day” by David Nicholls. I cannot remember which century I have read this book. Surely I did remember its major effect it had on me and glad to see that has now made into a series on Netflix. Perfect medicine to my jet lag after returning to HomeKong. Brilliant performances by Ambika Mod and Leo Woodall .Brilliant Ambika even double more! All that nuances. I am happy they turned the book into a series as if they did not not want to miss anything from the book. The stunning turns or our lives .And the village we hold onto. So much love. So much love.

One Day,David Nicholls

Go of it. Your choice, the book or the series. Tears or stoic. Tears.

Someone was just singing” Fear is knowledge becoming known”……