The holiday village

Hey hey… I am choosing joy. And by the end of sending this letter might also be a lot of discomfort and bug bites.

This could be quite challenging at times and so many of us show first a wave of resistance to even thinking of what joy might be. We might be just ignoring with the big paw of the tiger in our mind just by saying- easier said than done. Or, easy to say for x,y,z person as their life schedule allows, or we often hear - I have no time for this really or in total honesty- ignoring simply because we are too stuck into our routine and everything else seems much bigger than it is.

I could easily and recently be a living proof of last paragraph … the very thought that on a particular Sunday of my life 5 years ago, I would just get on a ferry and come to an island for like the entire day …would somehow generate a short-circuit to my brain and be a much bigger chore. Yes. I said chore. A far away statement from “joy” then.

I would not be too harsh on myself either. I do see a lot of things as phases in whatever we are trying to do or be or become.

Sundays are and definitely were my day to totally surrender, do nothing, practice the mastery of improvised delicious cooking and really tend to some self mastered rituals, also a sound proof for my recharging for a new week ahead. And here I was and I still am at time - within the frame of these rituals which brought me a structured joy and self care - I was also putting off some other options for joy, curiosity, doing things outside of the comfort zone and simply be in a new place with good friends and different rituals.

I have a feeling that today’s notes to you would be pretty much about nothing while also practicing one of my favourite habits - changing perspective.

The tree that you see is just left to my side. I kind of felt the impulse this morning to break my habit of Turkish coffee and the comfort of my living room and almost run to the beach nearby. I have been quite disconnected from nature for many weeks now as we had so many crazy rainy weekends. And I was feeling of living in the clouds only. The trees were calling, the sand was calling, the sounds of the waves crushing were calling. I turned this reconnection with the village into a bit of a compromise and came to the Beach Bar where they have nice coffee and benches where I could also write. Here I am.

Simple facts to understand my commitment to writing this letter today:

• The natural bugs repellent I have abundantly massaged on my legs turned into a bugs-attractor; I have to fight off multiple creatures at the same time.

• The weather looked definitely pleasant and not mad sunny that I cannot see what I type. The other bit, not super comforting, is the humidity … if you know Hong Kong, you also know what I mean. Natural moisturised skin you see, luckily my glasses can still be stable on my nose.

• My beach bag was not meant for “sunny days at the beach”, was meant for “writing at the beach” - is heavy, it has notebooks, books, ipad, reading glasses, sunglasses and the useless bug repellent. Even a nice yellow cap!

  These are all joy-proof rituals. I can assure you. Not.

  The joy-proof rituals seem like a little flop and yet that is what I might call the joy-proof method to embrace the fact that I have everything within my reach - in this case a Sunday morning, luckily a nearby beach, the desire to honour my commitment - to write, and say YES to a different perspective.

  I kept preaching the exercise of different perspectives- I was taking a course yesterday, with a lot of screen time and sitting and I have played a bit around the house with changing seats, my desk, my sofa, the floor, the walking pad ( another day another story), the kitchen table - opposite chair than my normal chair. The moment I have planted my ipad on a different pedestal, surrounded by plants,orchids, family portrait photos and windows just next to me- it was this huge eyes opening moment. My eyes started taking in everything as completely new information. The flowers were almost covering my screen, I could notice the details ,the nuances of pinks within their pinks, the grooves on the leaves, the soil and dirty pots! Ah Maggie Ah…. Where is your care? I could see the family portraits closer and I have reconnected with that moments in a very intimate way. Taken aback to a photo with my dad who was driving me to Bucharest to the airport and we stopped for a moment to play with fresh snow and enjoy the wintery forests of Romania. We were both cold and happy. And happy. And not yet sad to say good-bye yet(the more I travel back home I could also say, airports and good-byes are really harder and harder).

  I could also see my messy home as I had just turned my space into a study obsession. I have turned my inner space into my outer space.

• This painting is called” Our homes under construction”. What a joy to also meet the artist Eva Armisen at one of the recent art festivals in Hong Kong.

  She talked about this concept that we are permanently under construction. We can look at ourselves as homes. No matter where life took us, we raise up and we start building anew yet the foundation is also growing as we build up from previous homes.

  It seems there is a poem somewhere in the world talking about the different bricks we bring with us everywhere we go. Sometimes, we might think our bricks are the best and we would like others to also adapt and accept our type of bricks. The others would pretty much think the same and as it happens sometimes in relationships there might not be any match between the convictions that our bricks are someway superior and have to be accepted.

  As in my starting paragraph,there are some phases on our journey when we simply cannot reset our mind by diving deeper and perhaps doing a little assessment first.

  Let’s ask this first:

  What would be the best bricks that I could really build a foundation upon and I would like to expand upon?

  And when I start to find these jewels of bricks, I start building a real home to myself.

  My journey to this holiday village was full of synchronicities. It was also supported by real pushes and supports from close friends to help me find my courage to remove myself from a stuck place. They for sure have seen something that I could see then .Or I could see and yet I could not act upon. Because there it that too.

  The holiday village is a holiday village to me because it allows me to almost create multiple versions of myself during the same relative time span. A day has these two or multiple parts depending on what I chose to include in it. Sure, between work and back to the boat and the village there are already two versions of me. Meeting first time and making a new life.

  Once on the island then you kind of expand and welcome every day as a new day. We do not know what the elements will bring. We do not know if my washing machine is still on the rooftop or not after mad winds. We do not know what kinds of bugs are hitting the windows. We do not know what amazing roses or amaryllis open every day when I open the door to go to work. We stay curious to the surround nature and everything. Sometimes we might get afraid too and somehow all passes and sun rises up and birds are just impressing us in this majestic concert at 6.30am.

  And then once again, being on the island, and being engaged in building a foundation with best bricks of myself, I also find more and more engaged into learning new things and seeing the world as I should have seen it when back in school. Learning new languages, going to literature clubs, practicing all sports available in our schools, playing tennis in the main road and having a group of other kids watching out for the cars. There was a space of freedom back then available and wide open for exploration that is hard to forget.

I am just newly finding this again for past few years mostly forced by this weird isolation during Covid that pretty much made me look at what I am doing with a set of new eyes. Learning became of magnet. I would not like to turn that dial down.

The way I see the village, the island, my home here, is merely the space I want to be in internally and then just reflect that outwardly.

Among the things I could not leave my home without in this “beach bag” is a little cards set. Pema Chodron’s Compassion Cards - teachings for awakening the heart in everyday life.

Pema Chodron ‘s books are for me like a hand that pulled me out from a darker groove. I was not sure then who I am again as my entire “foundation” seem dismantling.

Pema Chodron’s Compassion Cards

So I would like to quote this wonderful humble teacher here and close my session today with her words.

28. Abandon any hope of fruition

The key instruction is to stay in the present. Don’t get caught up in the hopes of what you’ll achieve and how good your situation will be some day in the future. What you do right now is what matters