When cliches become real

The Pareto Principle

The value in doing nothing

Dark Light

Through experience, I have slowly (re)discovered why cliches have become cliches. This has been an observation that has truly confounded me, especially since a lot of them I thought I believed wholeheartedly already. It wasn’t until I had lived experience of the cliche that I finally internalised and understood why and how it came to be so.

A recent re-discovery is the old “variety is the spice of life” trick. Since the onset of intermittent quarantine and lockdown, finding things to do has been a bigger struggle than I imagined especially since I am jobless. I thought I would enjoy it endlessly, watching Netflix, reading whatever I liked, doing online courses, among other things. I quickly exhausted these avenues after only two weeks. I thought I could survive off a diet of the aforementioned activities, but I got so bored (the last thing I thought I would be). Everything I was doing would be relayed as consuming content. On this plateau, I forced myself to pick up new habits, namely writing and being more diverse in the books I read for example. When there was more of a balance in what I was doing, consistently writing, reading, watching varied sorts of material, my boredom subsided. Only when I was put in an extreme situation of being able to do whatever I wanted granted that I stay within the confines of home did I (re)discover this cliche.

The other big one was and is how people are more valuable more than objects, status, or exogenous titles. This is something that I wanted to believe oh so much growing up, but for whatever reason, the allure of prestige in the form of material possessions, positions of authority and general status-seeking behaviour often won the day. Not until I went backpacking solo around Malaysia did this cliche finally sink in. There I was, alone and not necessarily having anything to do but enjoy myself and discover the land I landed in. The most enjoyable days were the ones shared with fast-friends the world over. On the ground, I didn’t care for anything that I had or done in the past, it didn’t matter, the only thing was finding cool people to share the novel experience of backpacking and travelling with.


Related Posts

Tuning our personal narratives

This idea of a personal narrative –– the story we tell ourselves about the things we do ––…

Running is addicting

In childhood and adolescence, my identity was inextricably tied up with sport. Athletics, touch rugby, and football among…

What makes Sci-Fi great?

If I could only live consuming one sub-genre of entertainment, I would hands down pick Sci-Fi. Some of…