December 16, 2022
Yesterday after the last community outreach workshop of the year I was exhausted. It had been a difficult week and I was exhausted most days, but it hit a new low yesterday.
Yet I couldn’t go home and sleep. A craving had gripped me. I had to, just had to, get a few clickart zebra markers. The retractable marker with new technology that prevents it from drying up, ever. I had seen a few in Kinokuniya when I had visited two weeks ago, but the colours were limited so hadn’t bought any. I thought if Kino had them, then Popular surely would. So, after grabbing a meal in a quiet and empty Rocky Master (I’d rather have eaten some East Asian food in the basement of Raffles but everything was super packed and the noise in the basement was deafening) I headed to Popular in Bras Basah Complex. Ideally, I would have liked to have got some markers then eaten leisurely while making silly art in my journal, but I had been famished and needed to eat first. I roamed the stationery aisles on the top floor of Popular even after seeing that the Zebra Pens section didn’t have any. I hoped as a new product they might be displayed elsewhere. I felt dejected and the exhaustion felt more intense when I couldn’t find them. I really was wilting as I had already drunk all the water in the bottle I carry everywhere (yes, could have just bought more water but I wasn’t thinking clearly), but the desire to acquire clickart markers had grown so strong that I decided to walk to Tokyu Hands at Suntec.
And yes, they didn’t have them either. I felt so desperate that I snatched a six-pack of Pilot Juice-ups, 0.4, and went home. As I sat in the MRT surrounded by people, each with a ton load of packages (it is Christmas), the guilt descended. I had known it would even as I was picking up and putting back the pack in the store, definitely before I paid the SGD15 for them. I could have just bought a pen or two, but I wanted the pack. It felt more indulgent, and I wanted to indulge myself. I don’t completely understand why. Perhaps I felt it might fill some of the end of year emptiness, or perhaps to study how I would feel and what I would do about it?
The guilt wasn’t about giving in to desire. Desires and satiating them are a needed part of being human — for me at least. We can’t deny ourselves everything. Making choices of what to deny and what to satiate help me know myself. The guilt was about knowing that the pens I bought were not refillable and in buying them I was contributing to plastic wastes, thus messing with the earth and its environment. When I decided, about a decade ago, to switch completely to only gel pens that I could re-use indefinitely, and five years ago to fountain pens only, I had felt good. This choice I made yesterday made me think about the myriad other choices I make that contribute to global warming. All the unmindful things I do and tell myself that I am only one little cog, that me being mindful constantly puts an unfair burden on me and isn’t useful when millions of others never consider these things.
I don’t know how this writing moved from describing a day in my life to the small thing that made me consider my values. I thought I would be writing about one of the thousand other things that occupy all the layers of my mind.
So many other choices I’ve made, or am about to make, show me who I am. This year as awful as it has been in the way it has forced me to make choices I’d rather not make, has made me more mindful again and thus more in touch with myself, and for that I am grateful. I must be emerging slightly from the fog I have been in?
And the guilt — I decided to offer up some of the pens to other members of my family. I made swatches and took a picture. Hopefully there will be one or two takers.
But the guilt of being fortunate enough to have many meals a day, access to healthcare, a stable roof etc. etc. etc. tops the guilt of the glass of wine, the cup of coffee, the steak I eat, that contribute to global warming. What do I do with this existential guilt? It would ease only if the word were more equal, but it becomes less so every day, doesn’t it? And honestly that truth is exhausting.
Oh and a challenges update — 128 kata (instead of 150), 7000 words (instead of 9750), two books read (that one is ok) until yesterday.
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