This week’s word is container. Whether I think of a physical container or of the psychological container of a relationship, I immediately feel the presence of walls. A container is a paradox of space and boundaries, of being enclosed, and yet with room for processes like relating, changing and alchemizing. It’s one of those Being/Doing words that seem to capture some of the contradictions of being human. Recently, this word showed up in two distinct ways.

In the first instance (I’m sharing with permission), I was with a friend and she was talking about a relationship she was not sure was working for her. Just as she opened her mouth to explain further, she suddenly paused, a strange look on her face. I asked her what the matter was. “It’s crazy, but when I thought about my experience of being in this relationship, an image popped into my head,” she said. “It was me. I was lying in a plastic box- the box looked like a Tupperware container- that was halfway filled with water. It looked like I was a biology specimen or something! The lid of the box was gently lowered, and the other person didn’t even notice. They just kept talking.”

The image, emerging, perhaps, from deeper parts of her outside of her conscious awareness (what Jungian depth psychology calls the unconscious), seemed to suggest (using a literal image of a container!) that the container of the relationship did not give her much room to breathe or move. What she might do with this information, whether it was true, etc. may need more exploration, but, what an image!

My second brush with the word container was in my ritual preparation of what I like to call a creative toolkit. As a very young person, I mistakenly assumed/learned everything was my responsibility. As an adult, it’s been a hard lesson to unlearn, to slowly move from all responsibility, all the time, to identifying how little is actually in my control. One way that has repeatedly helped is to bring more art and creative practice into my life. I don’t know if I am any good at it (and I don’t really care if I am not) but it has improved my capacity to navigate uncertainty. I have written about these kits before…

I carefully pick out the colors I want. Gray. Cadet blue. Cerulean. Indigo. Lavender. When I hesitate, ten pairs of eyes watch me from within the clutter of photo frames on my desk and I imagine I can feel our combined relief when I add Carnation Pink, Melon, and Prussian Green to the pile I’ve already selected. I tie the crayons together with an old ribbon and place them alongside the three Gelly Roll pens (red, black, and blue), a new, large dot grid journal, a small pair of scissors, a glue stick, and a pack of Post It assorted flags. I put them all into a large colorfully-embroidered cloth pouch, zip it up, and feel an immediate sense of relief. Because the cloth pouch and its contents are both life jacket and superhero suit, and a log cabin hidden between tall trees. - from Toolkit, Ten Thousand Journeys

When I think of the word container, one of the first images that comes up is of art, and creative practice, as physical tools and space that open a door into the internal world. Container, then, does double duty, of holding space and acting as portal.

It’s your turn. Let me know what the word container brings up for you.

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As I write this, it’s Saturday morning. I am seated on my couch covered with a faded red suzani. The cloth is embroidered with concentric circles of flowers in many bright colors. The effect, sitting on it, is of being surrounded by whirligigs of flowers while the trees outside the window remain unmoving. It is quiet except for the faraway hum of someone mowing their lawn and the occasional tap of a moth against the glass. The room is scented from a small cone of incense, containing honey, sandalwood and frankincense among other things, that a friend has hand-rolled and kindly mailed to me. I let myself sit in this fragrant moment of not knowing what to write. Will the words tumble out, like the warm bodies of my children when they were young, and impatient to get outside and play?

I’m interested in new directions for this newsletter, and one idea I’ve been contemplating is to do a kind of written meditation on different words and phrases, and see what comes up for both of us. What words are alive for you in this time? For example, a word I have been mulling on is ‘reclaim.’ I searched online and apparently, one etymological antecedent of reclaim meant to call back (used in falconry).

Does a visual image come up for you when you hear the word reclaim? What sounds do you hear? How does it smell? Is something hiding behind the word? What energy does it carry? Or, does it leave you unmoved? (There is nothing prescriptive or some singular rightness in anything I write, so take what resonates and leave the rest.)

Every time I whisper the word, I see a color, a dark green that is almost black at the edges, like a forest after nightfall. Reclaiming smells like the soil, that womb of all growing things. I hear the plop of water drops, like you would after a spell of rain, steadily dripping from leaves, rolling down tree trunks, gathering momentum, and sliding, flattening, into puddles. To reclaim something feels like returning somewhere (that was once, or might still be) teeming with life. Of re-inhabiting a place I have lost connection to. Of re-learning its contours. Perhaps I might reclaim time. A capacity. A boundary. Rest, or a right to rest. For an experience to not be invalidated and thus, flattened into invisibility.

There seems to be a kind of warrior energy to the word but when we slow down, we might see that an act of reclamation has to be preceded by an awareness of loss. So, perhaps, reclamation is also, always, suffused with grief.

I wonder if it is grief that calls us back.

It’s your turn. I would love to hear if the word reclaim brings anything up for you.

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Dear Reader,

Hello. How are you? It’s good to be back. I took an impromptu summer break to figure out what I’m doing here on Substack and what the writing is building towards. (More on this in a later post.)

Last month, my husband and I went on a short island vacation. We rented a small cottage very close to a beach we’ve visited a few times. We love this beach because it is relatively quiet and has an expansive stretch of golden sand that is perfect for going on really long walks. There is a picturesque small river at one end of the beach that empties into a shallow bay and a wide, green stream on the other, and the color of the water keeps changing -blue, navy, teal, and bottle green- and creating magic. Walking here is like walking inside a sunlit kaleidoscope because you never know what color will capture you and hold you in its thrall.

We’ve developed a simple routine for these trips- right after breakfast, we walk from our rental cottage to the beach for a lengthy ramble from one end of the beach to the other followed by a short dip in the water, and we do it again in the evening, post-dinner. Whatever else we do (or don’t do ) during the rest of the day, we never miss these walks which are really bookends to our days on the island.

On this evening, it was after sunset. We stepped from the beach onto the road that led to our cottage about 5 minutes away. The street lights had come on, but they were spaced far apart and we walked in alternating pools of semi-grayness and hazy light. Many houses lined the beachfront and the roads leading to it, and we were talking about how it would feel to live in one of them, with the ocean as backyard. As we walked past the small house closest to the beach, we got a glimpse into the kitchen. It had two pendant lamps creating diffuse yellow circles of warmth on the countertop. I thought I heard someone talking, a laugh, and the clink of a fork against the plate, and I was gripped by a sudden melancholy. There must be a name for this feeling which comes on when you are standing outside on the street on a misty evening and catch a glimpse into someone’s home. Warmth seems to be over there, inside. I’ve sure you’re noticed that evenings, rainy days, and being far away from home can combine to bring on this feeling of otherness, of being an onlooker in the world rather than a participant.

We paused when we saw a house we hadn’t spotted before. I think it sat right on the beach, but it was large enough that it could be accessed from the road we were on. It had a dark wood exterior and a sloping roof. At one end of the house, in what looked like a large study or home office, two pairs of large windows sat opposite each other, one pair facing the road we were on and the other looking out, probably, directly onto the water. You could see the silhouette of two table lamps on a wide table or desk of some sort though the lamps weren’t turned on. There were no curtains or blinds, no one seemed to be in the room, and so, you could stand there, look in, and imagine yourself sitting at the table every evening, perhaps with a cup of tea, and gazing at the darkening ocean.

Ah, I thought to myself, I’m drawn to it because I’m always drawn to such rooms in houses, a place where I can close the door on the world and just write. It’s that old longing beating at my chest again. A room with all my books, a stack of old textiles that I could take out and stare at for inspiration, and every wall covered with art.

Ah, an answering whisper came from some other place or person or part, but what if it’s not a room you want, but an attitude, a way of approaching life?

In that moment, it felt like I was the only one on the dark island, the ocean now inside me, and I could hear the susurration of the waves as they rose and fell and sloshed against my sides.

Dear Reader, what if our longings are the soul speaking in images and metaphors?

I’d love to hear what you think.

Best,

Priya

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Hello, Reader.

I sent this post out last summer. It is one of my favorite posts because when I wrote it, I experienced it as an intense upwelling of emotions and words. I hope you enjoy reading it! - Priya

Dear Reader,

My back-door neighbors disappear almost fully every summer. It’s a slow, patchy, green obscuration, courtesy of a tall persimmon tree next to the fence that separates our houses. Today morning, as I stand at the kitchen sink filling water in a small saucepan and look out of the window in the back, their seasonal eclipsing is almost at totality. Only an edge of their terracotta tile roof and part of the upstairs window remain. Come fall, the gaps between the branches of the tree, bending under the weight of many fruit, will widen. And, as I walk through the different levels of my house, I’ll start to catch glimpses of them again. An upside-down triangle view of their patio door and the periodic appearance of the man as he jogs in circles around his house. Or, of the lady sitting on the step with her back resting against the pale brown-pink walls, head tilted, and her eyes closed against the sun. I always feel a strange reassurance at their reappearance. We don’t know each other, but they’re part of a cycle I unconsciously track, and though I can never be sure of the shape their return will take, I still count on the little predictability it offers.

It’s 6:30 in the morning and I am making morning chai. It’s bright outside, though already not as bright as a month ago. After filling the saucepan halfway, I place it on the electric hot plate and wait for the water to boil. There is a stillness, both inside the house and outdoors, a kind of dense immobility. If I close my eyes, I can almost smell the faint perfume of yesterday’s birthday roses mixed with the creamy sweet-tart aroma of the double-baked cheesecake. My mind drifts to what I’ve concluded from this year’s orbit around the sun. It turns out life really is about arrival. Or, at least, that’s what mine seems to be about. Not arrival as a victorious completion of some grand life journey, but as a repeated occurrence. Every time I think I’m going to get to a place where I can rest in the outcome (happily ever after), I arrive instead at a new place that requires growth. I think of these two places- the one where I can rest and the other where I have to grow- and convince myself they are not the exact same location.

The hissing and bubbling of the boiling water interrupts my thoughts. I get the tea canister out and quickly add three spoons of my favorite loose leaf masala chai to the water. The water froths wildly and the trapped air inside the house is now scented with a blend of tea, cardamom, ginger, and black pepper. I grab the milk from the fridge and add it to the chai mixture. I like strong tea, so I don’t add too much.

I make the morning chai in our house. Not all the time, but mostly. I like coming downstairs first thing in the morning. Each morning I pause to marvel at the brick red of an old cloth painting that hung in my parents’ home and now hangs in mine. The color hasn’t faded in the last 40 years and the simple gold-painted wooden frame still holds a subtle shine. I like looking into the eyes in the paintings of the Goddess as I walk to the kitchen. As I wait for the water to boil, I search for the moon and track the changes in its shape even as I check how much of the neighbors’ house is visible today. Being at the window every morning, and making tea, feels like a fulcrum, a ritual that remains the same day after day even as other small and big cycles play out continuously, their outcomes unknown.

The chai mixture threatens to boil over and I quickly turn the hot plate off. I use a strainer to strain the tea leaves and pour the tea into two cups. Chai is ready.

Dear Reader, I’d love to hear what forms a fulcrum to your days.

Best,

Priya

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Here’s what teatime looks like in the winter:

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Dear Reader,

I may have mentioned to you that I’ve written more in the last three months than I’ve written my entire life. Most of it is for my work, and the rest is the writing I do for myself and what I share here. I think about my lifelong, very obvious fascination with words. It’s as though I can spend a lifetime just pressing my ear against words and hear what they say or even better, feel their message with each beat of my heart. I knew I liked reading. I knew I liked to write and yet, I didn’t make any connection between words, and what I wanted to do with my life. It was right in front of me and yet, perhaps just by its very ubiquity, it was invisible to me. Or maybe it was just that I was young and did not realize the significance of a love that was right in front of me. In any case, I lost it and found it again, and that has been the source of so much joy. And so, I’ve been thinking about clues, signs, and symbols. I’m always fascinated with this topic. I think we all are. Sometimes we anxiously look for them as a sign of reassurance from an otherwise inscrutable universe, and at other times, the universe (or something within us?) is apparently sending what might be clues and we are oblivious!

In his book, The Symbolic Quest, Basic Concepts of Analytical Psychology, Edward C. Whitmont writes about Jungian depth psychology and the individuation journey, and he talks about the importance of symbols and symbolic life. He gives the example of a woman who collects objects that are shaped like butterflies. She is fascinated by them. Whitmont suggests that she may want to look at this fascination and explore the reason for her interest. Is it because something within her wants to leave the cocoon behind and develop into a butterfly? Sure, she may just like butterflies and butterfly-shaped objects, but it’s worth exploring if it is an inner call for some growth.

I had an experience where for a period of nearly two years, I was fascinated by circles. I spotted them everywhere. I remember being totally gripped by this painting by Gustave Caillebotte that I came across on one of those internet rabbit-hole searches. It’s called The Yerres, Rain. The colors are gorgeous, but look at those circles!

Finally, I found a small circle stamp and started stamping circles in my journal. One lazy Sunday afternoon, I sat at my desk, creating yet another page of circle art in my journal and out of nowhere, a sudden quiet realization arrived. The circle represented wholeness and it felt like some part of me was calling for more wholeness. I didn’t know what part or where. I would have to explore more to understand what this was about, but it was one of those moments that you feel in your chest and in your belly, and as goose bumps on your arms.

And, so, I want to ask you what you think of this. What is your experience of looking for signs or experiencing symbols or on symbolism?

Best,

Priya

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Dear Reader,

It’s 6 AM. I’m standing at the open back door. The sky is an opaque grey and extends all the way down, obscuring the blue of the mountain that I can usually see from here. There is not much movement except for two squirrels running on the wire above and two small birds playing in the lush foliage of the persimmon tree. I’m sure if I squint I’ll see more birds, especially the tiny ones that can easily be mistaken for leaves, but for now, I just stand here, enjoying the heavy morning coolness of the summer day and my cup of morning tea. I remember reading somewhere that when you drink tea, the first notes you encounter when you take that initial taste, are called the head notes and these are followed by the main notes, called the body notes. I can taste notes of ginger, black pepper, the smallest pinch of cardamom, and brown sugar, and it makes the coolness outside more welcome.

Last week, during one of my journaling sessions, a peculiar awareness arrived out of nowhere. The feeling was so real, like a kind of stillness or satiety, one you feel inside your body. I put the pen down and cautiously leaned back in my chair, as though leaning into the feeling. It had a kind of generous give that felt both inviting and nourishing. I have experienced similar feelings during meditation, but not outside of it. And, accompanying this feeling was a sudden clarity. For a large part of my life, I’ve treated myself as something or someone that needs to be brought into fruition, a project or a person that will one day be complete. I’ve treated my whole person this way as well as in very specific areas of my life, and I’ve done it both with harsh urgency and with tender care. I’ve also allowed myself to be treated this way by others. Perhaps I thought I was a sculpture or a statue, or a grand painting, that I would uncover with a flourish and present to the world one day. Ta-da!

I think all of us practice self-improvement to varying extents. We talk about journeys and transformation, and there is always this mirage-like place called Happily-Ever-After. But there is a paradox in the need to change something about oneself for a better experience but without falling into the mindset there is something wrong with me that will one day be fixed once I have the… whatever. Ah, but I’m writing as if we have a choice in the matter. Our experiences, ordinary and traumatic, may lead us to conclude there’s something wrong with us that needs fixing.

For the very first time in my life, I felt the arrival of something different, a kind of safety and repletion within one’s body. It means, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I am not busy and waiting to finish the project that is me. It feels strange and unreal, but I could really get used to this.

Dear Reader, I’d love to hear what you think.

Best,

Priya

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Dear Reader, if you enjoyed this post, I would greatly appreciate it if you could share it with a friend, your community, or on social media. It helps me grow Ten Thousand Journeys and reach more readers. Thank you, I appreciate your support! - Priya

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Dear Reader,

I’m typing this as I sit in an airplane. The afternoon sun coming in through the oval window on my right feels warm, almost hot. Outside my window, the painted metal of the plane’s quivering wing glints in the sunlight. If I squint through the feathery cotton of the white clouds, I can make out pockets of silver-gray water on the ground, occasionally hemmed in by undulating green hills. It feels like a spring day straight out of the end of a fairy tale and I want to press all these details- the vivid scenery, the heat of the sun on my right forearm, and even the combination scent of coffee, orange juice, and air freshener - into the page because I can’t tell you how strange it feels to calmly sit here and compose this letter to you as the plane leaves my home behind.

If you’ve been reading this newsletter for some time, you’ll know I am fascinated with what it means to leave home and go on a journey, and what it means to arrive. I think I started writing about it because I thought that if I could take all the pieces apart and do a detailed study of the anatomy of what it means to go on a journey (physical or otherwise), I might get better at it. And, to an extent, this has worked. For example, I found out that my problem is at the very first step: I’ve trouble leaving home.

I have trouble saying goodbye, especially when traveling alone and long distances. I am the person at the airport who goes in quickly and will resist turning around for a final goodbye wave ... I’ll pass through immigration and security and head to the boarding gate even if I have hours before my flight- and I usually do because I also insist on being at the airport very early. I quickly grab a book from my bag and start reading as though someone will test me on it before they let me board the plan…I know I have to get through the time, and that I would be okay once I got to the arrival part of my journey.

- The Belly of the Whale, Ten Thousand Journeys

I’ve some old reasons for this, but nothing too large and terrible. So, I’ve learned to take care of myself the way I would a child, with gentle firmness (I still have to do what I gotta do), and with crayons and color pencils every time I go on a trip. I’ve learned to ask for what I want and to love without attaching conditions. Inevitably, and as clichéd at it sounds, it has led to learning to love myself and to let myself be loved.

So, today when, for the first time ever, I didn’t feel the yawning abyss of anguish that usually accompanies me into the departure hall, I felt strange. I kept checking for it as though it was a part of my luggage I’d forgotten to bring with me. I went through the goodbyes, did the usual hop, skip, and jump at the security lines, and went to wait for my flight, and through all of it, I was conscious of the new inner quiet. Where did it go, I wondered, as I looked at the magnets in the airport souvenir store. Is this what they mean by coming home to yourself, I asked myself as I filled water into the water bottle. I couldn’t put the feeling into words, because how do you explain that it felt like I could move around inside and there was just more space? Even as I type this, I can feel it, this sensation of being folded back to make more room.

Maybe this is what it means to arrive.

“Whatever it is you're seeking won't come in the form you're expecting.”

―Haruki Murakami

I’d love to hear what you think. What does arrival mean for you?

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Best,

Priya

PS. I’ll continue with the dreams posts next week. Thanks!

Dear Reader,

Imagine this dream:

I am in a park with a group of about 10-12 people. It’s a warm, sunny spring afternoon and we are gathered under the shade of a large tree. There is a picnic table with open containers of food. Some of us have plates in our hands while others drink something from paper cups. The mood seems celebratory though the dream scene itself is quiet with no soundtrack of park noises (e.g. trees, birds), or of people talking or laughing. As we stand there, it starts to rain gently though it isn’t water that falls to the ground. Small flames that look exactly like the emoji 🔥 start to fall from the sky as though gently tossed by unknown, invisible hands. I hear faint whoosh sounds as the individual flames land on the grass. Where the flames fall on the grass, they hold on to their size and shape, forming small flickering flame-flowers on the green grass. Nothing is on fire and there is no smoke, just small flame-flowers dancing on the grass. I think our group starts running, but there is no sense of fear or panic. I hear a startled laugh or two, and I, too, start to run, a growing smile on my face. As I run, a portion of the grass in front of me slides back neatly, as though some hidden lever has been pressed, and I see stairs leading down into the earth. I run down the stairs and disappear from view.

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Let’s start from a place where we don’t know much about dreams. We may have a general idea they are presumed to be helpful in processing emotions and organizing memories, but apart from that, we might assume they are general, albeit fantastical, debris.

I had this flame-flower dream at a time in my life when I felt stuck in many ways. I didn’t know what, if anything, was possible for me. I felt exhausted and depleted in some vital way and was gripped by a debilitating, strong belief that this - my life situation, my attitude - was simply going to solidify into some semi-permanent state of stuck-ness.

According to Jungian psychology, dreams are messages rising from the unconscious and they may serve a compensatory function, showing us something we might not be (yet) conscious of.

I remember I couldn’t stop thinking about this dream for many reasons. For one, I don’t think I was dreaming a lot in those days, at least nothing I remembered. It felt like the dream arrived completely out of the blue and it captured my attention. It had a fresh and hopeful quality that was completely at odds with both my situation and attitude. In the days that followed, I took the dream everywhere with me1. I even drew a cartoon of it in my journal. It was vivid and pretty, and it hung around in the air around me like a lingering invitation. At times, it felt like a summons and a taunt, all rolled into one. I wondered who all those people at the party were. I wondered why I ran down the stairs. I wondered what was underground.

Reader, I’d love to hear your thoughts on dreams and about those dreams that showed up just when you needed them.

Best,

Priya

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Dear Reader,

How are you? It’s about 8:30 in the night and the house is quiet. I’m standing at the open back door. A spring storm is coming in tomorrow and the wind is starting to pick up. Because of the grey-white clouds, it isn’t totally dark outside. Many years ago, I watched a tutorial on watercolor painting where the instructor demonstrated how to do a watercolor wash on wet paper. That’s what the sky reminds me of, as though the instructor, standing just out of sight and to my left, has slowly spilled a blend of grays, and the translucent paint has spread with a design of its own. The cloud art vaguely resembles a train leaving the station (🚂).

It’s cold, and because of the wind, the branches of the persimmon trees sway gently while the olive trees bend this way and that with mad abandon. The air is richly scented with the smell of orange blossoms, the perfume intoxicating. I can see someone moving around in my neighbor’s warmly-lit kitchen and for a dizzying moment, all the contrasts- of stillness and the wind, of small amber lights in the surrounding homes piercing the cool grays of the clouds, of in here and out there- are spellbinding. The other, more immediate, contrast, Reader, while I’m standing on my doorstep in the semi-dark, is that I’m also standing between two lives, the old and the new.

I can feel my old life, an older way of being, fading, until only fragments of songs remain from that time. The new is here. (I feel I should add one thing here. Some people grow easily. Maybe they don’t hear the creaking, groaning, and squeaking pulling of their joints. I think some of us, for a hundred different reasons, do. And we don’t know what the noise means, whether we are falling apart and everything is collapsing, or if it’s the sounds of stretching into a new way of being. All this to say, for some of us, growth isn’t easy.)

Reader, do you remember that feeling of being on the cusp of a new life? If you could be intentional about it, what instructions (wisdom) would you take with you? The only requirement is you have to pack lightly.

I’ll go first. I have condensed my initial rambling list to just three essential points. Number one, track your dreams.

“The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens to that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach.”
― Carl Jung

Number two, learn to trust yourself. And number three, learn to live in, what Rilke called, “the questions.”

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”―Rainer Maria Rilke

I’m going to write essays about these three topics - dreams (what do they mean, where do they come from), the self (can we trust ourselves?), and living in the heart of a paradox- over the next three weeks.

Thanks to a young friend, I have started writing letters again. There is a physical immediacy to letter writing and yet you have to wait for a response. It captures that spirit of living in the questions. If you are reading this post in an email, I hope you will click through and read it on the website because, just like I would in a letter, I have attached photos and quotes there.

Reader, what are your three instructions for life?

Best,

Priya

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(If this email gets cut off, you can read the entire story on my website.)

Dear Reader,

Some years ago, my family and I were visiting an old town famous for many ancient and historical landmarks. We were on a last-minute weekend visit, one we’d embarked on knowing full well that most of the time would go in driving there and back. And, that we would have to return for a longer stay if we wanted to fully experience the place. It was the morning of our last day there. I don’t remember all the details, but I think it was probably mid-morning. I know we had finished a late breakfast, one we’d dawdled over in our reluctance to leave, and were now about to start our long drive home. I’d heard of the town’s famous antique market, but I’d already decided it would’ve have to wait for that second, more leisurely, visit. Though, given how fraught life was then, I didn’t know when we would come back. So, you can see, we hadn’t even left and already, we longed to return to the very same place. (There must be a word for that. That has also been, many times, my experience of life.)

As the car started, I realized I’d left my water bottle behind in the restaurant. “You can turn the car around. I’ll be back in a minute,” I must’ve said. I walked to the restaurant which was just across the road from where we were parked and found the water bottle on the table where we’d been seated. I must’ve nodded to the restaurant manager at his desk next to the door and stepped outside. Our car was now parked across a small street to my right, and facing the road home. I moved to cross the street and casually glanced to my right to check for oncoming traffic. The street was mostly empty. It was lined with stores and some of them looked like they were just opening for the day. I’d almost crossed before I realized this was the street with the antique stores. I stopped at the car, my hand on the door, sudden excitement building inside me. Surely, thirty minutes won’t make a difference, I must’ve thought, feeling giddy at the possibility of a sudden reprieve. I must’ve decided to ask if we could delay our drive back just a little, but almost as soon as I opened the door, I remember hearing the word, Go! I guess they’d already seen the dawning wonder on my face.

I love going out into the forest and by the water, but I also like antique shops, art galleries, flea markets, second-hand stores of all kinds, and museums. I’ve given up trying to define what exactly they do for my creativity, but it has something to do with objects that have stories to tell, and with colors and forms. All I know is they enrich my writing and conversely, the more I write, the more I seem to need these spaces. Reader, I am sure you will resonate with that.

In order to have a real relationship with our creativity, we must take the time and care to cultivate it. Our creativity will use this time to confront us, to confide in us, to bond with us, and to plan. - Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

Anyway, I walked slowly down the narrow street and stopped at what looked like the biggest store. I entered, said Hello to the salesman, and wandered down the aisle. I remember there were wooden doors, carved columns, and kitchen utensils, among other things. At the back of the store, stacks of paintings leaned haphazardly against the wall. The light was a little dim here, and it was quieter though that might have been the sudden hush inside of me, an awakening of attention. There’s some magic that traditional art, golden frames, gilded figures, and old glass-fronted paintings hold for me. And, an even deeper magic to colors like brick red, royal blue, and river green. Perhaps what I’m really trying to say is maybe a part of the soul of the artist remains in their creations, and when we stand in front of art, two souls might talk to each other. Or, maybe, art acts as mirror and we briefly, ecstatically, glimpse our innermost Self. I don’t know.

I started to look through those paintings that I could move without causing the stack to shift or fall. Red and green and gold. The deepest indigo. A pale pink that reminded me of a lotus bud garland that I’d seen in an old temple, and again, at a wedding. I felt both dazzled and overwhelmed, and a desperately-needed respite. Which is when I noticed this one painting that stood a little apart from the stacks. It was a small painting (probably 10x12 or a little bigger), in jewel-bright primary colors. It depicted a woman seated on a wide chair. As I drew closer, and I probably imagined it, I felt some energy, like a force field, pushing me away. It was almost as though the woman got off the chair, walked to the glass, wagged her finger and said No before walking back and resuming her pose. I’m almost sure I imagined the entire thing, but nevertheless, I stepped back. Don’t buy, the painting seemed to say.

As I walked back to the car, I wondered if the painting was waiting for someone else.

If you’re familiar with my writing, you probably know that I am deeply curious about so-called inanimate objects like paintings and whether they have a will, a journey, and a life trajectory of their own. I’ve written about another experience I’ve had with a painting that came home with me. Both these experiences happened at a difficult time in my life and it’s entirely possible that I was just projecting, imagining, etc. But, it was so real, an unexplained, intuitive feeling that I felt in my body, and it still makes me wonder.

I’d love to hear from you. What do you think? Do you give credence to gut feelings and hunches? How do they inform your decisions? I’d love to hear stories of your experience.

Best,

Priya

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Dear Reader,

Last September, just days before setting out on a long trip, and because I have trouble leaving home, I wrote about what I take with me to make the journey easier.

…It’s quiet in the house. The only sounds I can hear are my shallow inhales and the occasional clink of crayons against the sides of the tin box. The air is thick with their oily wax smell. I carefully pick out the colors I want. Gray. Cadet blue. Cerulean. Indigo. Lavender. When I hesitate, ten pairs of eyes watch me from within the clutter of photo frames on my desk and I imagine I can feel our combined relief when I add Carnation Pink, Melon, and Prussian Green to the pile I’ve already selected. I tie the crayons together with an old ribbon, and place them alongside the three Gelly Roll pens (red, black, and blue), a new, large dot grid journal, a small pair of scissors, a glue stick, and a pack of Post It assorted flags. I put them all into a large colorfully-embroidered cloth pouch, zip it up, and feel an immediate sense of relief. The cloth pouch and its contents are both life jacket and superhero suit, and a log cabin hidden between tall trees.

…Because I can become anxious, I’ve learned to ask myself what can make the change/journey even a little better and to make preparing for it a required wellness habit. When I was younger, I used to take a couple of novels everywhere with me. Once I had the books in my bag, I felt somewhat more prepared. But, strangely, as I’ve gotten older, and in spite of smartphones, tablets, and other digital devices capable of creating entire worlds to escape into, I’ve started taking old-school hands-on stuff: crayons, color pens and pencils, a notebook to write in, one that can also double as a scrapbook, scissors, tape, etc. I think these work to both physically anchor me in the present and create some kind of necessary safe space that I can inhabit even if it’s only for short bursts of time.

- Toolkit, Ten Thousand Journeys

These objects- dot grid journals, crayons in shades of both melancholy and happiness, and stationery supplies- are perfect for creating a sense of home wherever I am.

Perhaps it’s a sign that I’m getting better at leaving home, because I’ve recently started thinking about some of my favorite things to encounter out there in the world. Places, objects, and colors that provide entry points into some mystery, or offer a moment of perspective, reassurance, comfort, beauty, or outright joy. A list of favorite things. Like bookstores. Libraries. Old houses. Older trees. Lakes, rivers, and the ocean. Tall rooms with large crystal chandeliers. Teacups with a generous lip. The colors grey and pink laid side by side. Large windows. Candlelight. The colors indigo and vermilion. Cartons full of old magazines. Overblown roses. Orange and lemon orchards. Ferns. The green of the inside of a dark forest. Large museums. Old murals and gilt paintings of Southern India. Stone sculptures warmed by the sun. The words imbue, scry, and constellate. And, also, iridescence. Unexpected lily ponds. Navy blue.

I shared some of these favorite things on Notes and the list continues to grow. What would you add to the list? What are your favorite things? Let’s not leave anything out.

Best,

Priya

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Dear Reader,

It’s the early hours of Sunday morning and I am sitting at my writing desk. It’s a good-sized desk, both broad and sturdy. It is made, probably, of distressed oak, has metal legs, and, below, it has two deep, open shelves on each side. I bought the desk about 10 years ago with money I made from a writing project.

I’ve covered the center of the desk with a hand-embroidered, patchwork tapestry that we bought in a tiny dimly-lit store in a small town in Southern India. The salesman, after showing us some of his collection of embroidered textiles, said he had more select ones upstairs, but those, he continued with a speculative look, were for people who could fall in love with color and cloth. Of course, we followed him upstairs and behind the carpet partition where I promptly fell in love with this old-looking, large (5ft x 4ft) tapestry in many faded shades of pink, peach, and blue. The colors reminded me of evening skies in spring, the ones I watched from the kitchen window and the kids were still home. Different pieces of cloth are joined together to create the larger whole, and each part is heavily embroidered. When I run my hands over the uneven surface, I imagine women sitting in circles, their heads bent over the sewing, and feel some deep pull of connection. It’s been a few years since we brought it back and the colors have gotten softer and, if possible, even better.

On the tapestry, and the rest of the top of the desk, I’ve arranged framed art, photos, and quotes. There’s an art print of the outside of a bookstore. A printout of the words to a classical South Indian song that my niece sang one evening, and it felt like the Goddess had arrived. Part of an indigo-colored cloth because I’m convinced indigo holds some secret and if only I can stare at it long enough, I’ll know what life is really about. A photo of a warmly-lit cafe in Paris, taken on a grey wintry day. There are favorite objects- a bowl showing the changing phases of the moon and a kaleidoscope from Kanyakumari, the southernmost tip of India.

The four shelves on the bottom part of the desk are crammed with my favorite books. Lots of books on psychology. Books on myths. Symbols. Planets. Writing. Fairy tales. Poetry. Art. Jane Austen. The Brontë sisters. Eric Carle. Interior Design. One or two I Spy books.

Your sacred space is where you can find yourself over and over again.”
― Joseph Campbell

“You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

Dear Reader, reading, writing, and the contents of this desk have saved my life repeatedly, and I keep them close, for when my life might need saving again.

Tomorrow is the 2nd anniversary of Ten Thousand Journeys. Every year, my connection to writing deepens, and the joy it brings me multiplies. It’s two years since I started publishing a newsletter on Substack, but I’ve been writing for myself for nearly four decades. The funny thing is it’s only in the last few years that I’ve really identified that I am a writer. You know when you like someone, but you don’t really pay attention to your feelings for them. You just never really think about it. You’re busy and life always seems to be happening out there, elsewhere. And then one day, you realize that they are the love of your life. You smack your forehead with your hand and wonder how you could’ve missed it. It’s like some new awareness has blossomed inside of you and now, the knowledge is so inescapable and you can’t understand how you never saw it. That’s what writing means to me and I am thrilled to have your company for this journey.

I hope you will share in the comments the things that have saved your life.

Best,

Priya

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Dear Reader,

I’m taking part in ’s Hope Library, a community writing event about books, stories, and poems that gave us hope (which is why I’m showing up midweek)

Before I talk about the book that offered me hope at a very important time in my life, I want to talk about books and libraries.

Until about age 10, my family lived in Mumbai, India. One of my most cherished memories of that time is of being read to. There were lots of local small lending libraries, and both new and used bookstores, and reading was an integral part of our everyday life. Every evening, my mother would read to me from kids’ comics, myths, fairy tales, and other children’s books. It was the high point of my day and even after I learned to read for myself, I looked forward to her storytelling. And, so, I learned early that books were magical.

The next book-related memory that really stands out is sometime after my 10th birthday. My family had just moved to the Persian Gulf country of Oman for my Dad’s work. I still remember the day we stood outside the British Council library building, having gotten our new library cards, and the feeling of reassurance and happiness because we’d reestablished our connection to books. I still carry a vivid memory postcard of my arms weighed down with books, and walking to and from the beautiful, old library building that stood a short distance away from the scenic port overlooking the Arabian Sea.

Fast forward to my forties, and to reading The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. The book suggests there is a universal pattern to mythic structure that, broadly, includes Departure, Initiation, and Return. I don’t believe there is one universal, archetypal hero’s journey. I know there are many myths don’t follow this structure. There are instances when we may need to go forward on our own hero’s journey, but individualism is not the one answer.

Having said all that, this book had the most profound impact on me. I read it while I was wandering within the maze that the middle of one’s life can sometimes be. This book offered me hope because it said there was a formula. Imagine finding a formula, a pattern, or a map- I might as well say, a way home- when you’re lost. Discovering that there were maps that might apply to our lives- what the Jungians call archetypal patterns- was life-changing. It offered profound hope, and suggested one, I wasn’t alone, and others might’ve traveled similar (though not identical) paths, and two, that there might be an eventual way out. But, that was not all. I also experienced something at a more instinctual level. It was as though something within me awoke.

Until this book, I think I took words, more or less, literally. But after reading in this book about some of the rich symbolism and imagery in fairy tales and myth, I suddenly saw words as pointing to some more profound wisdom. They were guide ropes on a mountain whose top wasn’t visible, because it was so high and shrouded by clouds.

The discovery that something mysterious might lie behind the words I read on the page was at once hope- and life-giving. It forever changed the way I read and write.

You can read more about the Hope Library community writing event here.

Best,

Priya

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Dear Reader, there is this idea that journeys start with a loud and clear call to adventure. But, just as often, there is a quiet whisper or some longing that makes itself felt in a daydream, or a book or place you are drawn to. There are many new readers here and I thought I would share an experience I’ve written about before (I shared it last summer), of the arrival of a new journey in the quietest of ways. I hope you enjoy (re)reading it.

How to make room for a new journey

I thought I was going to write about some other things, but I find I am here to write about a room.

This is a story from a little over twenty years ago. My little family- my husband and I, and our toddler son- had just moved into a second floor condo. I remember it was July, and hot, though not as hot as this year has been. The wisteria that climbed the arches leading to the stairs, and that we’d oohed and aahed over when we were house hunting in May, had finished blooming. Now it was the blue-violet Lily of the Nile flowers’ turn to add subtle color to the pale blue buildings. Anyway, it was the first home we owned and we saw beauty everywhere we turned.

When you entered our condo through the back door, there was a small rectangular room just inside and to the left. I’m calling it a room, but it was probably intended as a large storage closet because it was the right size to store, in a line against the long wall, six vacuum cleaners, a mop, and a broom or two. There was enough space that you could walk in and wheel one of the six vacuums out without having to move anything else out of the way. Since we only had one vacuum cleaner, we decided to use the extra space to store suitcases, and other odds and ends. We closed the door on the clutter, and were well-satisfied.

However, over the next few months, the room started to exert a strange pull over me. Every time I passed by, it called out. Hey. Psst. 👋. When I turned around and stared at the closed door in confusion, it would lapse into silence. This went on for a few weeks until one day, I threw open the door and looked into the room. The suitcases and a few cardboard boxes were still there. What if I used the room? a tentative voice asked, to which another, rather smug, voice replied, To do what? It’s not like you are the creative type or have any hobbies.

At that time, I worked in a biotech research lab while getting my first Master’s degree. I had homework in the evenings, but that’s not what I wanted the room for. I didn’t know what I would do there, but I thought it might be nice. A room for me. Though the annoying voice was right. Except for reading, I didn’t have any hobbies. I was in my late twenties then. I wrote poetry when I was younger, but I hadn’t written anything for more than a decade. Apart from some scrapbooking as a teenager, I’d never wanted to make things with my hands. Maybe it was true after all. I didn’t have a creative bone in my body. But even though I had no need for a dedicated room, suddenly I felt compelled to claim this tiny space.

I mentioned it to my husband and he offered to rehouse the suitcases. He also pointed out we had a small guest room and since it was bigger, I might want to use that one. We had frequent overnight guests and I wanted something that I didn’t have to give up, even temporarily, so the guest room was out. And it was the small size of the closet-room, and the fact there weren’t any windows, that made it appealing.

Dear Reader, it was like the tiniest slice of the world that I could wrap around myself, a kind of a blanket of a room, and no one could look in.

We moved a desk and chair into the room, and I went in and sat there. It felt silly, especially when I knew the rest of the condo was empty. I could’ve sat anywhere in the condo, but I wanted to be here in this kernel of a room. Sometimes, my toddler would knock on the open door and we made a fun game of him visiting me. Other times, I would spend an entire afternoon there, door gently closed, daydreaming, while the other two took a nap or went to the park. I had no idea what I was doing, but for the first time in many years, something in me felt soothed. I went in, came out, and felt happier. There was this old Mastercard commercial called Priceless- “Some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s Mastercard.” The feeling I got when I went into this closet-room was priceless. Later, I started taking my tea, and, since this was before smartphones, a book or a magazine into the room. Then I took scissors and started cutting pictures. Slowly, it became my art room. Over the years, I’ve methodically claimed corners, closets, and rooms (with or without windows). For a period, there was even a small cottage-like space behind the house we lived in and, when my younger son was little, it was our hideout to sit and color together.

I think much of life is about two things- being at home and going into the world, and one nourishes you to do the other.

I haven’t become a great artist (not even a beginner artist) or an expert scrapbooker. But, somehow, sitting in the tiny room with its empty walls and clean desk, helped create an opening for me to eventually (e-v-e-n-t-u-a-l-l-y) return to writing.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
― T. S. Eliot

Dear Reader, we forget that so much of going on any kind of journey is about reclaiming what we’ve lost connection to.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Best,

Priya

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Dear Reader,

It’s just after 6AM. Sometimes, I wonder what if it was always just after 6AM inside my house. If only time can stand still in here. Then I can linger in the early morning darkness of my kitchen, admire the arrangement of teacups in the drawer, and run my fingers over last night’s washed dishes stacked neatly in the rack next to the sink. I can let my body hover over the fragrant steam rising from the freshly brewed chai, while the sky outside the windows slowly lightens, brightens, and then, again, goes dark, and Mars grows visible once more, glowing like an ember in February’s western sky.

I know Mars moves around. I, too, need to move into my day. But, every morning, while I make tea, I get to enter into a tiny, timeless little bubble while the world outside my window churns on. That, I think, is the power of a ritual.

I can divide my life into two parts: the first part, where I read, and interpreted what I read, in a mostly literal fashion; and the second part, when I realized that words can hide entire worlds behind them. That words can function as entry points to some vast, sacred mystery. This (re)discovery of metaphor has been life-changing. A ritual is an embodied metaphor. According to the dictionary, a ritual is “a religious or solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order.” It’s a declaration of intention. It can look as prosaic as habit and yet connect us to timelessness. Our daily rituals can be comforting and alleviate anxiety- they provide assurance of sameness, stability, and safety. And there are also rituals, both religious and personal, that function as thresholds and help catapult us into a new way of being. It is fascinating that one keeps us anchored in the present while the other helps us set sail.

Rituals, anthropologists will tell us, are about transformation. The rituals we use for marriage, baptism or inaugurating a president are as elaborate as they are because we associate the ritual with a major life passage, the crossing of a critical threshold, or in other words, with transformation.

-Abraham Verghese

Early last year, I wrote about some of my observations on personal rituals and I’m sharing it again, with a little modification: 1. You are the most necessary part of your ritual. Bring your Self to the table. What is your intention?

2. It’s a threshold which means the past, present, and future are here, all bearing witness.

3. Constellate words, movements, actions, etc. that hold meaning for you. I like the word constellate, meaning “to group together” and related to the Latin word for stars, stella, because 1) a ritual often involves more than one kind of action (words, movement, etc.); and 2) more importantly, it’s a conversation or a dance between you and the stars. You may want to bring in art, dance, and symbolic play to make it meaningful and personal to you.

   One purpose of creative ritual was to experience the connection to “the other” as well as a deeper connection to oneself. That’s why ancient people would say: that ritual made me more aware of how I’m connected to life, to the earth, to the spirits, to the song of creation, and made me more aware of who I am inside, at the level of my own being. What we’ve lost is partly the sense that we are each connected to the whole thing, that each human soul is secretly connected to the living soul of the world.”

   -Michael Meade

I’d love to hear from you! What do you think of personal rituals? How have they helped you?

Thanks for reading,

Best,

Priya

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Dear, Reader.

It’s a cold Saturday evening as I sit down to write this post and it’s already dark outside. The room I’m in is colder than the rest of the house, thanks to the glass doors behind me that make up one wall, and I tuck my legs further under the old pink embroidered tapestry covering my desk and pull the table lamp closer as though its circle of yellow light can warm me. I’ve pushed away my laptop and I’m using the dot grid journal, the one I use for my Morning Pages, to physically write out the post. (I haven’t been able to write and I’m trying to coax the words out even as I berate them for being so difficult.) The house is quiet, even the refrigerator is silent, and I can hear the pen moving on the page as I try to make sense of everything through writing it out.

The thing is I’m at the tail end of a few long journeys, 29-years, 35-years, and even a 45 or 46-years1 long one, journeys whose endings are apparently all coinciding. These were long journeys (45 years!). They were powerful. And, they did that magic, where the change, while appearing to happen out there in the world, repeatedly led me further inward. I caught a glimpse of an inner home, and fleetingly understood what it means to come home to yourself, and to do so repeatedly. It was as though, with each year, and each new change, I opened a new door and entered a new chamber within this inner home. That sounds so beautiful, I think now to myself, pausing in my writing, even though in the moment, the changes were disorienting, confusing, and very challenging. Please take my word for it that the specifics of my journeys don’t matter because the truth is we all experience them, albeit they look different for each one of us. Rainer Maria Rilke, as always, was right: “The only journey is the one within.”

So, I am at the end of a few old journeys and the new ones haven’t started yet. Which means I’m in a kind of transition zone, a threshold. If you’ve been reading my work for a while, you know I’m fascinated with thresholds. Thresholds are these weird spaces or stretches of time where both the past and the future coexist. We can think of thresholds as life’s waiting rooms, but they are not passive places. Think of the months before you start college, or before graduation or retirement- you are already changing, you know you are, and yet, there is also the comfort of staying with the familiar. You want to stay there even though you vaguely feel/know it’s time to go (grow!).

In any new journey, there is a threshold-a line, a border or edge, a gate, a doorway, a bridge, a passageway, a span of time, or set of behaviors- that lies between the old, familiar, known world and the new, unknown world. Because thresholds are the first step into the unknown, they can evoke fear, doubt and anxiety.

Whether thresholds are physical spaces or measured in time or behaviors, they are liminal (Latin ‘limen’ or ‘limin’=threshold) or transitional spaces: a lot of change is happening here. - On Thresholds, Ten Thousand Journeys

The Jungian analyst and author, James Hollis, in his books, often talks about asking the question, where is life asking me to grow? I don’t think he was specifically talking about thresholds, but I really like that question because I immediately feel this resistance in my body that outlines all the reasons why I can’t do this growing: I am too scared; I don’t like it; it’s not fair; I am too old, too young, etc.; or, my favorite, a version of I shouldn’t have to. A threshold is like an alchemical container, one where we marinate (hardly an alchemical word!) with these questions. There is no pat answer and no prescription, just your experience. Sometimes, there is not even the demand for immediate action, just a call to witness a change. A personal ritual can be helpful when faced with a threshold and maybe, next week, we can talk about rituals, and where do they belong in a modern world?

Reader, I want to thank you for your patience. I haven’t been able to send out a newsletter every week (or, maybe you haven’t noticed, in which case, carry on!), but I am trying to.

I’d love to hear from you. How have you experienced life’s thresholds and what is the one observation/lesson you can share from your experience?

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Best,

Priya

Dear Reader,

Happy 2025. May the year bring you more love, more friends, and lots of great opportunities. Thank you for being here. I hope you’ll grab a cup of tea and settle down to read this letter.

My writing started to slow down in November even as my non-writing life picked up pace. Initially, I thought I couldn’t write because I was too busy doing other things (IRL, like the kids say) and not spending enough time writing. But, that wasn’t true. I still sat down to write everyday. I still journaled extensively, filling up page after page, but when it came to more formal writing, one written with the intent to publish (for the newsletter and other projects), there was a general haziness, and everything took twice as long as it normally did. And then, almost without my noticing, a quiet, silvery fog descended, shrouding the words. I wasn’t sure if it was a natural tapering in the creative process or if I’d hit some roadblock like the Inner Critic choking off words before they hit the page. I wanted to push through the fog, but I was also reminded of the following quote from Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ The Creative Fire: Myths and Stories on the Cycles of Creativity.

All creativity is a cycle, not a singular event with no past and no future. But a cycle that has that quickening and rising to a Zenith and begins to decline and falls into a death and then an incubation, a holding or waiting period, and once again a quickening and then a rebirth. And this process continues over and over again. And it is this cycle that is right, and proper and cohesive and sacred.”

-Clarissa Pinkola Estés, The Creative Fire: Myths and Stories on the Cycles of Creativity

This quote, describing life cycles as much as cycles of creativity, makes me think of raindrops falling on the surface of a lake. It’s an image I’m repeatedly drawn to because it offers a glimpse of the dizzying number of cycles and spirals we might be part of, our own and that of others.

We get so used to the ‘quickening and rising to a Zenith’ and certainly, that’s the part which is valued and celebrated, and the ‘decline’ and ‘holding or waiting period’ only appears important as a prelude to some inevitable rising. Maybe that relentless hope is part of being human. Since I’ve written more in the last two years than I have in decades, I decided to honor the time as marking the end of one creative cycle, and hopefully, the beginning of another.

Reader, I am very happy to be back and I hope you’ve missed reading Ten Thousand Journeys.

The Innocent Archetype

Imagine you are back in a time before the internet and smartphones. You’re traveling by train. It’s about 4 in the afternoon, and you are a few hours into your journey. You’re going back home after attending a favorite cousin’s wedding. You had a great time at the wedding, reconnecting with close and extended family members while also trying to ignore their teasing about how it’s surely your turn next. You had a great time, but you are happy to be going home. It’s a 14-hour train ride, but you don’t mind. You’ve already ordered your favorite train dinner, a spicy vegetable biryani with raita, to be delivered around 7:30 PM when the train stops at one of the bigger stations. The tea vendor has just made his way to your seat, and you gratefully accept a small cup of hot cardamom chai from him and settle back comfortably, your eyes closing. Immediately and almost compulsively, your eyes open, and for what seems like the hundredth time, your gaze drifts to the young woman sitting next to the window, diagonally across from you. The sun which was almost directly overhead when you got on the train, has shifted and is now shining its warm light on her. She is probably in her early twenties, a few years younger than you. Her glossy black hair is plaited and draped over her left shoulder. She is dressed in shades of pink, looking for all the world like a rosebud about to burst into blossom. She’s sitting straight, her smiling face raised to accept the benevolent sunlight. She reminds you of someone, though you can't quite place the resemblance. You close your eyes, suddenly feeling grumpy, cold, and a little tired.

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According to the dictionary an archetype is a “typical example of something”. The word comes from the Greek arkhetupon which apparently means “something moulded first as a model.” Jungian psychology describes an archetype as a universal, autonomous template or cluster of behaviors, patterns, or symbols.

“The Innocent is the part of us that trusts life, ourselves, and other people. It is the part that has faith and hope, even when on the surface things look impossible. It is the part of us that “keeps the faith” in whatever it is we are hoping for. It is also the part that allows us to trust others enough to learn from them, so it is essential to learning the basic skills of life and work.

We all begin in innocence, totally cared for inside our mother’s womb.

-Carol S. Pearson, Awakening the Heroes Within: Twelve Archetypes to Help Us Find Ourselves and Transform Our World

As a writer, I’ve tried to capture some essence of the Innocent archetype in the above scene. The words, phrases, and ideas I associate with the Innocent archetype are: idealism; the belief/assurance that one will be received by the world; a lack of doubt in the world or in one’s abilities; optimism; bravery; the idea that the world is there for you; a belief in happily-ever-after or in fantasy; the quality of if only I show up, my heart in my hand, optimism radiating from me, everything will work out, and there will be a happy ending. The Innocent is probably all of us when we are young though it can be a person for the entirety of their lives. It can be a stage of our life or we might be Innocents in some area of life.

I’d love to hear from you. What are your thoughts on the Innocent archetype? And, if you’d like to share, how would you portray it?

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Best,

Priya

Dear Reader,

Here’s what I continued to learn this year.

“In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost. Ah, how hard a thing it is to tell what a wild, and rough, and stubborn wood this was, which in my thought renews the fear!”

―Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

1. Some years, your external situation remains more or less the same, but it’s a whole different story on the inside. Internally, there is massive change happening and you experience it as though you’re part of a The Lord of the Rings-type of drama, complete with rising action, allies, and murderous villains. This is how the last 7-8 years have been for me and how this year also turned out. However, it’s hard to succinctly, and believably, explain this kind of change when other people ask you how you’re doing. (😀)

2. Change, internal or external, can be thrust upon us, but a lot of the time, change is a slow, iterative process, with much backsliding and often, people give up. When we talk about going on a journey, we are talking about change.

3. I chose journeys as the topic for my Substack because I wanted to uproot my fears around change. I wanted to lay them out on a table, study them carefully, and learn as much about them as possible. I hoped that, once I gathered enough information and completely(!) excavated the surrounding pain, I I could chase my fears away forever. I’ve learned some of them may never fully go away and that I have to act anyway. I’m still getting used to this.

   I've done a lot of thinking about fear. For me the crucial question is not how to climb without fear-that's impossible- but how to deal with it when it creeps into your nerve endings.”
   ― Alex Honnold

4. I’ve learned it helps to have a plan and to know that sometimes, plans don’t work. That uncertainty and change are part of life. What I can hope to do is walk myself through the next change portal with a little more support and a little less terror. Which means I have to trust that I can be there for myself.

5. That the most ordinary moments and actions can be a gateway into the sacred. And, that myths, archetypes, images or symbols, and journeys hold great relevance even (especially) in contemporary times.

   Starting Jan 2025 (I meant to start this last month, but I have had a crazy busy few weeks, leading also to the Fri/Sun confusion!), my plan is to examine different archetypes through storytelling and to help us draw parallels to our contemporary lives. I’m starting with the archetype of the Innocent.

   Dear Reader, I’d love to hear what you’ve learned about change and journeying. Wishing you a wonderful holiday season and a great 2025!

   Best,

   Priya

   Leave a comment

   PS: Part 2 of the short story Baby is here.

   ---

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Dear Reader,

I committed to donating the yearly proceeds from the newsletter to charities that support kids and that’s what I did today morning.

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Dear Reader,

When I said I would send out posts on Friday, I forgot today was the day after Thanksgiving. It is wonderful to start with gratitude. I am grateful for many things, but I’m especially grateful for family. For the smell of chocolate that fills the house, the result of an afternoon helping my younger son bake a birthday cake for his older brother. I want to keep a snapshot of this moment in my wallet: the boys here for the holiday, and the green of the young olive tree silhouetted against the bright pink-yellow-orange leaves of the persimmon trees. All of it - the people together in the house, the branches of the persimmon trees still heavy with fruit, the steady fall of leaves which then cover large parts of the grass as though they are confetti in the aftermath of a glorious party, and even the squirrel hanging upside down to eat the fruit near the top of the tree- make up a moment of arrival, of having climbed some significant part of a really large mountain. I want to carry this moment forever in my heart, to remind myself that I too was here and partook in the sweetness of life. That I tasted its warm, honeyed, round taste even as time slid stickily through my fingers.

The sun arrives and sets the leaves ablaze with joy.

Reader, what moment do you carry around in your wallet?

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“kairosclerosis n. the moment you realize that you’re currently happy—consciously trying to savor the feeling—which prompts your intellect to identify it, pick it apart and put it in context, where it will slowly dissolve until it’s little more than an aftertaste.”
― John Koenig, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Kairosclerosis sounds like the perfect word for the melancholy of departing even as we arrive.

A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

Today’s moment of arrival reminds me of departure, the inevitable flip side. For years, I’ve had a problem leaving home. I’m more or less okay the next day, but the moment of separation- from home, from family- brings up a terror of somehow being permanently lost in transit, as though I am a package without an address, destined to never reach or return home. (If I were to coin a word for this debilitating fear, I imagine it would have to end with -ma, have at least two r’s, and sound as anguished as a wolf’s howl.) This is a particularly pernicious kind of fear. Because how do you start a journey if you are unable to leave? Maybe I’m really asking how does one live if one is afraid of life?

“It is said that before entering the sea
a river trembles with fear.

She looks back at the path she has traveled,
from the peaks of the mountains,
the long winding road crossing forests and villages.

And in front of her,
she sees an ocean so vast,
that to enter
there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.

But there is no other way.
The river can not go back.

Nobody can go back.
To go back is impossible in existence.

The river needs to take the risk
of entering the ocean
because only then will fear disappear,
because that’s where the river will know
it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,
but of becoming the ocean.”

―Osho, Beyond Enlightenment

I guess you get really good at going on a journey by practicing.

Dear Reader, I am very grateful for your company on this writing journey.

What moments do you carry in your wallet?

What part of the journey are you most afraid of?

Any suggestions for naming the debilitating fear? (Remember it would have to end with -ma, have at least two r’s, and sound as anguished as a wolf’s howl.)

I’d love to hear from you!

Best,

Priya

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