Moments in May

What is it about the first of May? It became May 1st and suddenly, it felt like so much time had passed and too much had not been done. This year, the departure of Ramadan too, felt especially sad and immense. I am usually looking forward to coffee and have ample brunch dates in the calendar once the month has passed. This year, Ramadan had felt like time away, from time itself, to an extended moment of peace and contentment that I did not want to end. And so since Ramadan has left, two moments that have disrupted my notion of time, reappear for me frequently:

A few months ago, I was praying at a friend’s house, quickly and probably not too attentively, but after the prayer she said to me, I wish I could take out five mins as often as Muslims do for prayer. She was envious of the way our day is held together, almost like dots on a map, by these five moments of prayer. And then, a few weeks ago, on a post 5pm train leaving the centre of London I sat by a stranger on the train and could hear Quran playing from his earphones. People are sweaty, tired and look miserable, I’m checking my step count, writing my to-do list for tomorrow and hearing the Quran, in the midst of this, was a reminder, again, of time away from time. The kind of time that doesn’t feel bound and is a moment of finding peace and contentment in the midst of it all.

I am taking the memory of these moments to be reminders. They are reminders that force me to zoom out of all the doing and recenter. How do you remain conscious of time, use your time well and yet, refuse to be bound by the constraints of time and the constant doing? How do you balance seeking and living in moments of peace in the midst of so much doing?

These are the questions that draw me to pen and paper and fill my notebooks —

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When you are a person who wants so much from life, from time, from yourself, you are so often contending with the self; negotiating with the self, and trying to optimise time. I often feel overwhelmed by how much I want to achieve in this life; from this life and from myself. I don’t mean the wanting of things; I mean the wanting from and of moments. How much moments and people mean to me, the first cup of tea, the first ray of sunshine that meets me when I step outside, sentences that spark moments for me, the perfect amount of sweetness in coffee, each of these, amidst others, brings me immense joy, every single time. And sometimes, my own wants of myself, exhaust me. Sometimes, I see myself morph back into a little girl dreaming about all of the things I wish I could do, all of the things I wish I could solve and all of the things I wish I could make quieter and calmer. And now that nothing is no longer out of reach, practically, I find myself dreaming still, about solving this, making that quieter and this calmer.

How much of our doing, comes from the longing of a past self? And how much of our time is marked by completion and achieving?

I am realising that I am internally, constantly, reminding myself I can do it all because I am a believer that it can all be done. That is always my beginning point. Being one of five sisters and daughters is formative in so many ways but in particular, that sense of proving why daughters are worthy pursuits and how much they can do remains. But in doing so, I am squeezing myself, constantly and I am existing in fragments of past and current self, longing for a past self and worrying for a future self, struggling to accept that I don’t have to keep squeezing myself.

To want to live, to want to love, to want to empathise and understand, I have come to realise, to be a daughter and sister, to write and be a writer, these are all never-ending pursuits of love and hopes to serve, they are constant dreams and ambitions and constant failings, and wishing you could do more. And in the way that I feel the joys and rewards of each of these relationships and pursuits so deeply, I feel the failings of it and the wishes and longing to do more.

We are quick to condemn the wanting of things. The materialism, the excessiveness. How much of wanting and longing can be bad for our current self?

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It struck me at some point in May that we are 5 months into 2023 and I have written nothing that is complete. I have filled pages and the ink has run out on several of my pens, but there is no complete piece. And sometimes, I have come to accept, doing, is the clearing out of all that is happening and all that you are noticing.

Writing is not this hippy, airy-fairy intangible thing, where inspiration strikes suddenly, and you end up with an article; a novel; a complete thing. ..In fact, the very art of writing, for me, is all about putting things in order, it is a place of release, but also a place of being meticulous, precise, disciplined liking order to disorder, putting pieces of the self and thought together. In putting thought to pen and paper, my internal negotiation and re-negotiations suddenly take structure and form.

I think I keep remembering those two moments, in the month of May, because they are what it feels like the search is, the bigger ambition is: moments of peace and contentment, outside of time, forcing me to look outside of all the doing in the midst of it all and focus on being, and living. I am always waiting for a perfect moment to write, but thinking happens and sentences form in the midst of it all, the act of writing; to create, to give structure and shape, to create space, to mark those thoughts, and think them through.

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These thoughts in May accompanied me to Copenhagen. Cities have always been compact structures in which we locate our thoughts, with particular landmarks capturing some of our best strides and moments. Take Sam Selvon’s observation of little London’s within London in his The Lonely Londoners that never ceases to be relevant. Or the landscape of London that emerges in Mrs Dalloway traced by her characters coming to their selves and realisations. When I walk through St James Park, I can’t help but think of Mrs Dalloway walking and when I take a bus in the centre of London and romanticise the view, I remember that London is ‘divided up into little worlds’. The cityscape has often been a metaphor for the body, and a site for social commentary. And Copenhagen has become a part of mine.

In Copenhagen, my work/meetings consisted of learning about the different sustainable systems at play in the city, from district heating networks powering multiple cities in Denmark, retrofitted social housing, to Copenhagen quirks like visible green bins with hearts and LED aesthetic street lanterns instead of standing lamps. It is no surprise that Denmark ranks as the happiest country in the world, one of the most sustainable and has one of the lowest poverty rates. I had always thought the way in which I feel everything together is rather disruptive to my work. Being in Copenhagen however, made me think about whether the mindset comes first to shape policy or whether policy shapes mindset?

And so we return to the cityscape and the body. How do you combine the striving, the optimising, with what is liveable? What is sustainable for you? Sustainability must mean liveability, is what we are learning, and so at the centre of the cities, and all the dreams towards a greener future, is the humans who are living within it. How can we make sure being more sustainable is designed for the present, living human in the midst of it all? And for me, that means determining and affirming, over and over again, what is at the centre of my system, my ambitions, my dreams, my optimising of time, are they sustainable for me?

And in thinking this, I morph back into the little girl, dreaming about all the solutions, the adventures, the freeing things she could do and one day will, all with a pen and bit of paper in hand.

In the spirit of sometimes doing is doing nothing, sometimes doing is clearing out, making room, and giving space, there is no completion here. Just a sense of all the things I have been thinking about in the month of May.