Hey,
It’s 1 pm on the 30th of August and as always, I’m writing my letters on the day I want to publish despite deciding to write it weeks ago lol.
So please if you see typos, they’re a part of the experience. I’m 29 today. Gonna hit the 30’s soon. Feels very exciting. I have interesting thoughts on time that I’ll probably pen down later. However, I’m grateful for this moment in which I type on my keyboard.
Grateful for every moment I’ve experienced in the past year. And every single moment of my life so far. I’m grateful for having people like you in my life who get to be a part of my life experience, on different levels of connection.
I appreciate and deeply value each connection. Despite all my flaws, I’m grateful to have people in my life who find me worthy to play a role in theirs, no matter how little.
All the love I have to give would always be with you. My smile would always be with you. And I’m rooting for you on your individual journey of your life experience.
Today, I’m writing 2+9 lessons of my life so far that I think are important to share. Hope you find some of them relevant to your own life experience.
Stay Jiggy.
I. The duality of life
What is the most indivisible thing in the world? It’s not the atom. It’s quarks and leptons. They are the fundamental element of everything that exists in our universe. Their attributes are “wave-like”. The interesting about waveforms is that there is always a crest (high) and trough (low) as they are not linear. There’s a high and low
(random photos of myself, just because)
So the fundamental nature of our universe is duality. A high and a low. If you think about everything in your life and in the world we can observe, there is nothing that only has one side. There is no front without a back. No here without a there. No black without white. Society teaches us to long for a life that’s one-sided. It goes against the very nature of our world. Therefore, we should accept that the world we live in consists of highs and lows. That way, we would stop labelling and live blissfully because, for every low you are experiencing, there is always a commensurate high around the corner.
II. Knowing is different from truly knowing
I like to use the honey analogy here. Let’s take a 5-year-old kid who’s living in Antarctica and has never tasted honey in her life. One day, she speaks with his Aunt in Nigeria who’s having some honey. She gets curious, asks her about it and afterwards, she devours all the information she can find on honey. Watches YouTube videos, reads all about bees and more. There’s no honey in Antarctica, so she never actually tastes it.
At this point, do we say she truly knows honey or she ‘knows of’ honey? It’s a knowing of because all she can attach to honey is a label and descriptors. Now, let’s say she goes to visit Nigeria at age 10 and one of the first things she does is to taste honey and she absolutely loves it!
At this point, she truly knows honey. She doesn’t need a label or anything else when she thinks of honey. In the same way, when you think of honey, you don’t think of the word. Your very being knows what it is.
(my fam)
We come into the world as children with wonder-filled in our eyes. With a blank slate, children aim to truly know everything they come in contact with and when they experience it, they feel so fulfilled. Our society however through school and culture trains us to prioritize ‘knowing of’ things rather than truly knowing things.
The tree on the roadside. The pattern in your couch. The ants. The birds. The little things. Think about the percentage of what you know of and what you truly know. If you aim to increase the number of things you genuinely know, beyond labels/descriptors, I promise you every day of your life will be blissful.
III. Everything you would ever be is within you already
Think about who you were five years ago. For most people, we’re better than we were back then. Would it be accurate to say that the ‘potential’ for all you are today was already within you back then? Just like everything the mango seed needs to become a big tree and live for many years resides within it’s small seed. The being you are today also had all it needed in the cells of your parent’s sperm and egg.
Why then do we worry and have anxiety about the future? When we have the potential to be all that we can be. I posit that if we spend more time in the moment and who we are right now. And we worry less about how the past has affected us or how a version of our future would be better, you would be better placed to unleash your potential. So don’t worry about a thing. All you need to achieve your wisest dreams is within you. Just go forth into the world and act.
IV. Nothing beats living life every 24 hours
The only thing we are sure we’ll experience in life is the present moment. Society trains us to not talk about death and to fear it. Yet, it is one of the absolute truths in our world. Everything that lives shall die. So why do we decide to live in oblivion of this?
Embrace it. Embrace your 24 hours. It’s all you’ll ever have. Thousands of 24 hours. Each would be unique and different, regardless of the life situation. Make each 24 hours the best 24 hours there ever could be.
V. Life as it is today, isn’t how it’s always been
Things that exist in our culture today that seem like ‘it’s how things have always been done’ are often much more recent than we realize. We have a short collective memory as a species and culture. Most of us assume that habits, values, and principles passed onto us are absolute and there can’t be any other way of doing things.
All things have been passed on by humans. Therefore, all you see today didn’t exist at some point and was created by individuals or groups of people at different points in time. Are many of them incredibly useful? Absolutely. But they’re not set in stone and our responsibilities as humans is actually to probe them and improve on them where necessary. We have that power. Don’t let anyone tell you any different.
VI. Suffering is internal
It’s easy to assume that we experience life externally. This is because our senses send a lot of information to us based on interaction with things external to us. However, the things your eyes see, what your eyes hear, your sense of touch, and your thoughts, are all internal. Yes, you can decide to blame things on external circumstances but it’s all internal.
Therefore, all the suffering we experience is internal. Don’t get me wrong, they can be influenced externally but it’s all internal. When you realize this, you realize that you have much greater control over how you ‘suffer’ (particularly suffering that we experience emotionally and mentally). We’re trained to blame our suffering on external things. What do you choose? To suffer or to go on a journey to reduce the suffering you bring upon yourself?
VII. Action is the creative energy of the universe
Before I started writing this letter, I had a list of things I wanted to write about and I thought intensely about what I wanted to write. However, more than 80% of the words I’ve written were things I couldn’t have thought of. It was only after I took action that I was able to unlock the contents of my subconscious.
The same principle applies to everything we do in the world. It is only when we act that we can unlock that which exists in the universe. Spend less time worrying and thinking and more time acting. Then everything you seek shall come to you.
VIII. There is no destination, the journey is all that matters
We crave a destination. A future that’s better than where we are today. A better job. More money. More cars. More comfort. More kids. Better relationships. The future is always better than the present in our minds. People preach contentment which is nice. But I think it’s easy to argue against contentment cos it also assumes an element of mediocrity.
(with my beautiful mama)
Let’s think about it as an understanding that human wants are unlimited. They can never be satisfied. When you get to the future you seek, all that changes is the ‘form’ of your ‘problems’ and ‘pleasures’. I wouldn’t say you should not desire them. However, because the want would always persist, why not bask in all you have today? Appreciate it fully. Enjoy it fully. It’s a unique experience. Don’t worry, life will throw other experiences at you when you appreciate each of them. So enjoy the journey. There is no destination. Only a change in ‘goals’. I’d rather enjoy the journey.
IX. We are one with the universe
I am you. You are me. You are an amalgamation of everything and everyone who you’ve interacted with in your life. Yes, in your conscious day-to-day, you filter and decide on what you want to stick with. Fundamentally, genetically and otherwise, we all share a piece of each other.
If we are all one with each other, perhaps we should treat each other much better. How would you treat your heart if it was a person? Or your liver. Or kidney. When you know it’s essential to your survival. When you experience everything in the world as a part of you, the central message of Jesus’ teaching resides within your very being: You would love your neighbour as you love yourself.
X. The power of now
At some point in the past year or two, I unlocked the power of now. I can’t remember the specific moment it happened but in that moment, I began to be able to ask my mind and thoughts to take the back seat and hear what I call the sounds of the universe. The vibrations that exist in everything in the world. The sounds exuded by quarks and leptons in everything that is in our world.
If you internalize a lot of the learnings I’ve listed above (also read the book: The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle), you experience bliss in every single moment of life, regardless of your life situation. You understand that the world is just the way it is. It’s ups and downs. You forget the labels that teach you that something is negative or positive. It is just an event to which we ascribe a label.
A simple way to start observing the power of now is to relax whenever you get a minute in your day and observe things in your environment. The bottle of water. The food. The chair. The car. Don’t label it. Just aim to truly observe it. In everything you observe, you experience the beauty of the world and you experience the bliss of life.
XI. Life is always evolving, be kind.
I don’t know everything and I never will. There’s a whole lot more we don’t know than things we know about the world and universe we exist in. Yes, we have ideologies, beliefs, scientific explanations etc. Still, there’s so much we don’t know. Let’s get off our high horses.
Let’s experience it. Let’s be open to being incorrect. To make mistakes. To failing. To loss. To gain. To love. To heartbreak. They all shape our experience of life.
This letter was written while listening to a favorite album of mine: Laughter, Tears and Goosebumps by Fireboy DML.
Love always,
Francis.
The two points that resonated with me most:
- Action is the creative energy of the universe
- There's no destination, the journey is all that matters.
Thanks for sharing these, Francis. Happy birthday! Wishing you an incredible year ahead.