Leonard Ng

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.