Yet Untitled 128 - Voluntarily Decimating My Streak
Don’t panic, just doing what feels healthy
Hello dear Yet Untitler
How’s it going? Hope this hurtle towards year end is full of positive anticipation, excitement and some eventual R and R for you.
This is a brief but pertinent instalment. What I’m about to say will mean more to the veteran Yet Untitlers among you, but some context: for the past 153 weeks, I have published Yet Untitled every Sunday night in an unbroken streak. But…
…for the first time in nearly three years, I’ve decided not to publish for a week or even two! 😱😱😱
Writing YU has become lifeblood for me. I do not feel like stopping or slowing. I am not fatigued. I am not groping in the dark. In fact, I feel I’m at the cusp of some fast approaching next step. It’s all quite exciting.
Perhaps that’s why, counterintuitively, this feels like the correct time to momentarily disengage engines and glide freely a bit, like these gulls in Australia back in 2013:
It’s exciting but also a bit scary! There is a very real fear of losing the wind under my wings and not finding it again. But what if this fear turns out to be some new wind in disguise that carries me even higher? I’m curious.
Before I exit for my hiatus, I’ll share a few thoughts that led up to this honestly difficult decision which also feels both honest and right.
Here goes:
‘Progress’ is dodgy
Living in Mumbai, I experience a city that’s constantly moving forward, sometimes too fast for its own good. I feel it moving so quickly that I fear it’s leaving some of its citizens behind. Near every swish new residential tower there seems to be an open drain full of smelly hell-fluid or a slum full of human suffering.
Living here builds a strong case for pausing and considering how we got to this place where it feels mad to even have arrived. This thought reassured me that stepping off an advancing trajectory every once in a while, even if the trajectory feels progressive, is healthy.
“Voluntarily assuming appropriate Karma”
In the Lotus Sutra, there is a story of an event called “the ceremony in the air”, where the Buddha asks an assembly of heavenly beings an important question - who after his passing would propagate his teachings in the future?
In response, a host of volunteer beings called the Bodhisattvas of the Earth emerged and answered the Buddha’s call. These beings are said to be virtuous men and women who were actually entitled to graduate from the pains of repeatedly being born and reborn, but they assumed the appropriate Karma in order to be reborn - this time to do the Buddha’s asking in the difficult circumstances of the present defiled age.
To me, this narrative of ‘voluntary regression’ is fascinating, especially because commentaries on the Lotus Sutra see it as an eventual progression - that by agreeing to do the Buddha’s bidding against the harsh attrition of the present age, they actually accelerated their progress towards attaining enlightenment like the Buddha.
This idea of the Bodhisattvas of the Earth stepping forward by stepping backwards (and getting their hands dirty all over again) also gave me some affirmation as I nervously toyed with the idea of breaking my streak.
Dearest Yet Untitlers, it’s amazing how something that I’m so reluctant to do feels so right. It feels like I’m acting on a wise instruction I heard in Baz Luhrman’s Sunscreen song.
I’ll miss you while I’m away. If you miss me, there’s always my archive to browse through and catch up on instalments you’ve missed. But perhaps, the break will be an opportunity to think about why you opted to read Yet Untitled in the first place. After all, it has never been a one-way street. If it had been, I feel I would have meandered off this streak a long, long time ago.
If you do have a chance during this hiatus to reflect on your relationship with this here little news-missive, do share! Likely, it’ll become a part of the catapult that launches me back into your orbit for our the next stage in our relationship.
I’d love to hear from you!
A heartfelt thank you for walking with me and listening, even if you’ve just joined the pack. Let’s howl at the moon together in 2025. Let’s keep peeling, polishing and refreshing this world with our wonderful, ongoing conversation.
Lots of love
V
Getting nervous about this break of yours for me 😬😬. Each week, I have drawn comfort from your consistency and of course the gold mine of great recommendations and reflections. But a good way for me to practice the discomfort of equanimity and detachment in real life context and to keep going on. Thank God for the great archive to rummage through in your well deserved, well intentioned break. As with your presence, your absence will also guide me in my own journey of being a writer/thinker/person(er!)
The break will bring more wind under your wings.