this week’s Thought (singular)
every day my need to hydrate faces off against my desire to not leave my room to fill my bottle. i think i might be the worst person in the world.
a very warm welcome to all new readers. i love new readers so much that whenever i get an email about a new reader, i manifest that they have the right blanket for the summer. thank you for joining us. may you not sweat under the same quilt you use year-round out of sheer stubbornness and misplaced nostalgia.
a very warm welcome to old readers as well. may good sense continue to prevail.
hi
there is only one question, and it is how to love this world.
for a couple of months towards the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024, i was going through what felt like some sort of cosmic disbelief about whether all adults were as miserable as i was, and if that was the greatest prank played by the universe on humans—that you become an adult and immediately start experiencing a dreadful, gnawing thought that growing up seems not-so-great maybe. the question i kept returning to was ‘is this it?’ is this what all the brouhaha was about?
i had written about this in a piece from last year titled ‘being in your early twenties is like’, which you can find here where it was published first, or here from the thodi archives.1
My heart takes on a life of its own, breaking and mending in a constant feedback loop. With every fantasy about adulthood that is shattered, I sputter and flail under a new wave of grief. With every tiny joy that independence allows for, I soar higher. Every day is a battle between cynicism and belief, between becoming jaded and retaining childlike enthusiasm. It seems so much easier to tip over into a gaping maw of resignation and bitterness, and an active, agonising battle to stay curious and present. It seems like I'm perpetually running on empty and I can only hide from the cruel sweetness of hope. It is an act of rebellion that demands all of my reserves to let hope find me - again, and again, and again. I viciously oscillate between is-this-it and this-is-it. I question every adult in my life – is this how you’ve been living all these years how do you do it how do you do it how can I do it I don’t think I can do this. The answer makes me frustrated and bitter – that’s just life. Then I buy a gift for my friend and I think – this is how you do it. I am reminded that my voice has power, that my words have significance, that my presence matters, and I think – this is how you do it. I pet a purring cat, read a good book, have lunch with my friends, and I think – I am so happy to be alive and excited to keep on living. 25, 35, 70.
so yeah, obviously i was Going Through It, but i think the sentiment is one that is wont to return periodically. i’m less jaded, more present than i was when i wrote that last year, but still, sometimes i think—is this it? i’m more normal about being an adult and growing up now (if you can call having an entire weekly-ish newsletter in which i dissect it normal), but occasionally, when things get tough and i throw a little tantrum at the universe, a bit of that disbelief resurfaces—this can’t be it.
(as an aside, i do think part of this has to do with the fact that so much of our childhood is never a celebration of the present and is always forward-looking. most of the reasons given to teenagers to work hard revolve around getting into a ‘good’ college, getting a ‘good’ job, having a ‘good’ life when you grow up. these are all noble endeavours, of course, but it’s also a lot of concrete weight given to an amorphous future. i think the let-down of adulthood when it’s been built up as the ultimate life destination for the first 18 years of your existence is inevitable, honestly.)
around the time i graduated from college, towards the end of 2023 when this horrific thought first started sneaking into my mind, i made a joy list.2 it was a project in paying attention and giving care to smaller moments that sparked joy, to fight back the whole is-this-it-ness of growing up. as i find myself becoming increasingly caught up in routine and difficult work, and that itch under my skin screaming at something, anything, to get over and something new to begin is making a comeback, i think it’s time for my next joy list. i’m ready. presenting -
Jahnavi’s Joy List (Reprise)
the time between 12 am and 3 am in your room. you have nowhere to be the next morning, and you’ve crossed the threshold of wondering how this will affect your sleep schedule for the next week. it’s been so long since you went to bed, and morning is so far away, and all that exists is now. and it’s such a blissfully empty now. nothing scheduled, nobody around you. it’s the most lovely solitude, where time stretches to infinity behind and ahead of you, and it feels like it fully, truly belongs to you.
when you’re meeting old friends you’ve known your whole life after a while, and the hangout makes that shift to what it used to be when you were younger. the first few minutes might be awkward, but like a switch has been flicked, suddenly you’re giggling at something silly, or talking about third grade, and anything that was stinted evaporates. that singular moment, the click of slipping into old, comforting company, is what sustains you.
freshly washed hair
receiving a compliment for something you’ve put your heart into
returning to an old album that was once very special to you after many years. it used to be the only thing you would listen to for weeks at a stretch until it suddenly and inexplicably dropped out of rotation, but revisiting it feels like coming to a house you once lived in and meeting the you that still lives there. the few seconds it takes to grasp the melody again, and the slow unfurling of the song ahead, a path you can see clearer with every note, a path you can traverse more confidently with every beat. transportation to what was and what you were, and gratitude for what the song was to you when you needed it then.
reading more leading to writing more, listening to more music leading to singing more. the tips of your fingers tingling with the need to make something that didn’t exist before, the burning desire for creation after consumption, the most human feeling of being moved to make, inspired to invent, by a piece of art.
laughing until you’re crying, stitches in your sides. occasional giggles that set you off again. something healing inside you, leaving behind a glow. endless minutes of from-the-belly, snort-filled, graceless and unabashed delight. a return to the inelegance of childhood disorderliness, a joy so humongous that your body physically cannot contain it.
standing in the sun after being in the cold. entering the cold after being under the sun. change that feels good, change that feels right.
a completed to-do list
videos of pet cats interacting with babies, any workout that makes your body take over from your mind, a long walk after a long day, discovering a new song that gives you goosebumps and makes you cry, talking to people who are kind and soft and open in a loud and cruel world, talking to people who are funny and whimsical, writing with a good pen, the smell of garlic and onion on the pan, being able to help somebody, a sky full of fluffy clouds, coming back home (any home), calling multiple places home, all of your friends being online and in a good mood at the same time, and yellow lighting.
something i have begun to feel very strongly about, my new gnawing obsession if you will, is that life actually isn’t supposed to be difficult. this isn’t it, because i can change it. i can do the things that make adulthood easier. i can spend more time with my friends, try new things, connect deeper to myself as a living being and not as a resource for productivity, make more art, crack the world wider open than how it presents itself and ravenously grab as much as i can with both my arms outstretched, resist the optimisation of my humanity and embrace wild and messy personhood, keep trying to slow down in the middle of a machine that’s going at breakneck speed.
it’s a scary thought, because in some twisted, roundabout way, the manner in which things are set up means it’s more convenient to resign ourselves to this idea that everything is supposed to be tough. it’s difficult to break out of this, but increasingly i’m becoming a little audacious. this doesn’t have to be it, and i think i owe it to a younger-jahnavi to find this ‘good’ life that she’s been sold about adulthood.
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A Picture!
English Recitation Competition
Pinnochia, you must not stop for a friend, Lo Kwa Mei-en (full poem here)
My heart avoids itself like a moon once married to the sea. The crossroad asks what I bring to the tale. It’s a good question. I wish I did not know but I know how to tell the truth like a demon bleeding in the basement. And under the basement, two children fight to make mercy last. You push harder, but rain floods the vehicle that rises from the corner to take one of us home. In the story, the world is familiar, then bright– distant bells screaming for salvation—but you are gone. I am sick, and holding the violent breath of my need. I am somehow—though not at last—alive and well.
A Path In The Woods, Anna Kamieńska
I don’t trust the truth of memories because what leaves us departs forever There’s only one current of this sacred river but I still want to remain faithful to my first astonishments to recognize as wisdom the child’s wonder and to carry in myself until the end a path in the woods of my childhood dappled with patches of sunlight to search for it everywhere in museums in the shade of churches this path on which I ran unaware a six-year old toward my primary mysterious aloneness
Pedrouços, Fernando Pessoa (tr. from Portuguese by Richard Zenith) (full poem here)
My heart has become forgetful But not my eyes. Don't steal from them, Time, That picture in which the happy boy I was Gives me a happiness that's still mine! Your cold flowing means nothing To a man who cuddles up in memories.
Inessential Things, Brian Patten (full poem here)
Cats remember what is essential of days. Letting all other memories go as of no worth they sleep sounder than we, whose hearts break remembering so many inessential things.
The Good Side of the Internet
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this week’s Song
Raconte-moi une hostoire by M83
find all shared songs here.
thank you for reading, and see you next week <3
i still think this is one of my favourite pieces, and it’s a comfort to return to it and to see how much more settled i am now.
