The Measure That Matters
What do you carry when everything else is gone?
In one of my random evening meanderings, I stumbled upon a poignant movie. It was a Japanese film called After Life. The premise is on the afterlife of the dead. To be honest, I am mildly fascinated with the concept. I have done a fair share of reading and research. I guess I will have to wait till I get there to know how it goes.
Circling back to the movie, the premise is based where the newly departed arrive at a quiet building where they are asked to choose one memory from their life. Only one. It will be filmed, replayed once, and everything else will fade. That memory becomes their eternity.
People don't choose milestones. They choose fleeting, tender things: the way wind moved through curtains, the sound of laughter in a kitchen, the feeling of being deeply seen.
That question stayed with me: what memory would I carry?
I used to long for a long life. Now I long for a meaningful one.
A Memoir, Maybe
Lately, random memories keep surfacing. Scenes I haven't visited in decades: odd, tender, sometimes absurd. It's made me consider writing a memoir. Not a grand one. Just fragments from a not-so-common life. Some of it known. A lot of it still buried.
There's plenty of personal lore in my life. Hilarious detours. Some parts I've outgrown. Others I've just begun to understand. But whenever I begin to take myself too seriously, there's a voice inside me that laughs and says, "Easy now. Write like you're living, not auditioning."
So I write. And unwrite. And notice what returns.
Much of my creative journey has been shaped by the presence of generous friends—those who gently encourage art without needing to name it, who walk parallel paths of healing.
is one of these rare souls I met in a stage of life where I was in a blur. She made space for me as we met through serendipitous co-incidence in art school. We have spent many memorable moments together during the last few years. She left London for new adventures. I find myself grateful for the postcards sent during travels, the shared meals, the way she believed in my work when I couldn't quite see it myself. From sketchbooks and beyond, our friendship has been woven through seasons of becoming. Though geography will shift, some bonds transcend distance—we're friends for life, destined to meet again in another city or country, probably with art supplies in hand. I believe that we meet people who are meant for our lives. I am so proud of her as she explores her life to build with more meaning. Our last meeting before our paths cross again soon. Oh and we do love trees :D
My Mother, the Lantern
One memory that I can never get tired of and return to often is of my mother—a quiet, luminous woman. Her final years were marked by constraint. She spoke of things she missed. I didn't know how to hold that then. I was too entangled in becoming someone.
Understanding her grief came later. It brought with it a small prayer that I keep repeating often:
Dear God, empty me from myself.
Not to vanish. But to soften. To make space. For what matters. For who I'm becoming and unbecoming. To never forget the storms each person may be fighting oblivious to me. To remind that each day when I am able to function as a healthy person is a gift that we often take for granted.
Becoming the River
Alan Watts once said a river doesn't force its flow. It unfolds.
I used to paddle hard, changing course, trying to predict every bend. These days I picture myself as a small boat with a sail stitched from love and curiosity. Slowly, I'm learning to drift with the current, not fight it.
There's a strange peace in surrender. Not passivity, just presence. The kind that knows you're being carried.
Sometimes, I think of it as a song. A quiet undercurrent, like “Landslide” playing far away—
“Can I handle the seasons of my life?”
The answer, if there is one, is this: maybe I don’t need to handle them.
Maybe I just need to flow with them, become part of their unfolding.
I am in my Fleetwood Mac era season :
This river metaphor makes me also want to write about the contradiction I carry within.
The River and the Paradox
I live inside a paradox.
Part of me craves depth—wants to understand what it means to live well, to be good, to love honestly. I ask what matters, and then I ask again. Yet another part understands that I have to learn to embrace emptiness. For shunyata—Zen emptiness. To dissolve into the sky. To be like water, without destination.
I've tried to reconcile these: this seeker and this surrenderer. Perhaps I don't need to. Perhaps I'm just the boat. The current. The journey. And the sail, flapping lightly, always catching a bit of wonder.
The Quiet Score
Each day feels like a note in a larger score. Some days ache. Others hum. Grief (the kind that came with understanding my mother's longing) has become a tuning fork. It sharpens how I listen.
Andrea Gibson whom we lost last week once wrote:
"The hardest part of having a body / is sometimes I just want to be a poem."
And I feel that too. I don't want to be remembered for doing much. I want to be felt for having been: tenderly, truly, lightly.
On Waiting Without Timestamp
There's something else I've been learning, quietly.
It's about being faithful to the questions.
For the past six years, I've been holding a few questions close, the ones without easy answers. In that time, I've been laughed at, gossiped about, and even cut off by people I loved. And yet, I stayed with the questions. A stubborn hope not out of pride but out of love stays with me.
I've let go of the timestamp. I no longer demand answers on a deadline.
I wait. I live. I listen. And I trust that the unfolding will bring what it must, when it must.
Joanna Macy who we lost yesterday once spoke in a podcast of this deep trust in life's unfolding—how we are shaped as much by the waiting as by the answers. Her words brought me back to Rilke:
"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves."
Some questions aren't there to be solved, but to be lived through—and in time, if we are faithful, they answer us in ways we didn't expect.
On a different note, there is a sudden exodus of writers I admire who are passing away. I have this feeling that perhaps grief changes the shape of who we are if we encounter it as a young person. That helps me answer myself on my longing to be present with the awareness that tomorrows aren’t guaranteed.
A Memory to Carry
If I had to choose one moment, like in After Life, maybe it would be this:
A quiet kitchen. Morning light. My mother humming to herself. An ordinary conversation. The way our home fills with laughter when I act as my silly self. Me lazing on the couch watching the clouds passing by on a sunny day. Nothing profound: just belonging. Just being.
Quality over quantity. Not as a lifestyle hack. As a truth.
This piece feels like a thread from that memoir I'm considering—one that won't be linear or even complete, but might be true in the ways that count.
I want to bow gently to the souls whose lives have left a tender impression on mine: to Caryn, whose friendship has been a gift of presence and encouragement; to Andrea Gibson, who reminded us that feeling deeply is its own kind of courage ("I'm not afraid of dying. I'm afraid of living without meaning"); and to Joanna Macy, whose wisdom helped me learn to hold both grief and gratitude in the same hand ("You don't need to do everything. Just one thing, and that deeply").
This piece is for them. For my mother. For the ones we quietly carry, and the moments we keep, when everything else is gone.
Thank you for reading this meandering post.
The poems I have chosen for today are :
I’m Nobody! Who are you? by Emily Dickinson I’m Nobody! Who are you? Are you – Nobody – too? Then there’s a pair of us! Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know! How dreary – to be – Somebody! How public – like a Frog – To tell one’s name – the livelong June – To an admiring Bog! The other poem that I would urge you to read is Asking too Much by Andrea Gibson
And maybe that’s the measure that matters at the end,
not the milestones or the noise,
but the quiet courage to stay soft,
to stay curious,
to keep loving through the questions.
Until next time,
much love <3