Leonard Ng

The Five Elements: A Systematic Approach to Holistic Living

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coloured journals
Image by Liz Weston.
A Comprehensive Approach to Personal Growth

Modern life is a pretty complicated bagful of kittens.

On the one hand, we’ve come to believe that there’s more to life than making money, having fun, raising a family, and staying out of trouble (or getting into trouble, if that’s what you prefer).

But on the other hand, there’s so much going on in life that we hardly know where to begin.

We might want to get every part of our lives running happily along and playing nicely together… but there just seems to be so much to consider. We have noble dreams of balance and fulfilment and harmony, but how can we keep track of it all?

That’s where five-element theory comes in. It’s a system I use to ensure that my days are meaningfully spent, and it works, too.

Basically, this is an old concept which uses the five classical elements as shorthand for the various aspects of life: Earth, Water, Air, Fire, and Void (or as I prefer to call it, Whitespace). Put together, these five cover just about every aspect of human growth and personal development.

If you’re anything like me, this approach will give you a framework that can help you shape your life more wisely and effectively than you ever thought possible.

Let’s get to it.

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The World Is Deep

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September desktop
My desktop, at the moment.

It’s been some months now since my last entry, which was all about living with focus; and living with focus is exactly what I have done. Apart from work and a social life, here’s what I’ve been up to: I’ve…

  • travelled across the United States, from Boston to New Orleans;
  • established a regular habit of reflection and meditation;
  • moved into a beautiful new office space in a good part of town;
  • doubled the number of strict pull-ups I can manage;
  • explored old ruins with the Urban Explorers of Singapore;
  • started writing several scenes for a new play;
  • and finished reading almost 17 books of Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, in Ancient Greek.

Life has fallen into a clear and steady rhythm, and I’m reminded of Nietzsche’s lines Die Welt ist tief, Und tiefer als der Tag gedacht — “The world is deep, and deeper than the day bethought.” I first encountered those lines in the Fourth Movement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 3, and they’ve stuck with me ever since.

I am much clearer, these days, about who I am and what I stand for. But for now, just a quick note to say I’m still here, still going, still listening to the music of the world.

Living with Focus

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Celadon
Image by me.

They do less and less till they arrive at non-action; they do nothing, and nothing remains undone.
— Tao Te Ching, 48 (my translation).

More and more these days I try to do only one thing at a time.

When I work, I work. When I walk, I walk. When I write, I write. Nothing else.

We live in a world awash in distraction. Phone, email, social media, television, advertising, all clamouring for pieces of our attention and consciousness. So easy to give in to the frazzled static of it all.

I don’t say those things are bad in and of themselves. But too much of them, like too much of anything, definitely is. And we live in a world hypersaturated by media and distraction.

Many people spend their lives pursuing entertainment, pursuing distraction. They measure their lives by what they consume. That is their affair. But that is not the standard I use for my own life.

I measure my life in focus. What have I done with my day? I ask myself before I go to sleep every night. And I write down whatever I accomplished, whatever was memorable. I first started doing this 20 years ago, and though there are some gaps the story of what I have done with my time, day after day, is still remarkably complete.

When I do things these days I try to do them with full focus, or if that’s not possible with at least 90% focus. Did I tutor a student, write an article, transcribe an interview, study a language, meditate, sprint, lift, summarize a book, read a play, work on a poem, train a skill, pay attention to a landscape, have an engaging conversation, make love, dance with a partner, write a journal entry? All those things take focus. They are mindful activities, not mindless ones, and my life is better in the long term for having engaged in them.

I am trying to make focused activity, not distracted activity, the primary use of my time, while still alternating it with periods of rest. And when I succeed I know, because of the way it makes me breathe: my breath is deep and slow.

American Melancholia

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Sinuous
Image by Nicholas A. Tonelli.

I’ve been listening to country music lately, in the middle of the night when all else around is sleeping. Songs from the ’70s mostly: Kenny Rogers, Anne Murray, Johnny Cash, Reba McEntire, Willie Nelson, Crystal Gayle, Kris Kristofferson. There seems a certain fatalism that rings through mostly clearly in the sad songs, always a sense that the affair must come to an end: the cowboy has to move on, and the dreamer too, and the hobo, and the gambler, and the salesman, and the soldier, and the cheatin’ wives and husbands. The music of a people always on the move, the music of lives moulded by distance.

I’ll be back in America in a couple of months, beginning in the northeast and heading back down south. North Carolina, Florida, quite possibly Texas. Haven’t been in ages. Looking forward to it.

Walking Again

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ECP Kallang
Image by Philippe Put.

I haven’t had this in a while, this sense, this sound. It has been a long day and I have been on the go since the moment I woke, criss-crossing the island, busy, with appointments and work and so many things to do. When did my life get so full? But now I am pleasantly tired and I am sitting by the water in the quiet nighttime city, a fountain whispering at my back.The moon tonight is full, lovely and large as it rose out over the bay, and now it sits, high and silent, a circle of stark white in an empty black sky. Occasional pinpricks of stars. There is a breeze. And I am glad to be here, glad to be out and walking and alone, as in ones and twos the tourists and the lovers and the runners go by, passing like thought, as on the wrinkled water the boats. And in the distance, chiming the hour, a bell.