If there were a global ranking of Stoic Masters, I reckon the Japanese would rank among the top. The 2011 tsunami alerted the world to the potent devastation of formidable waves; it also let the world witness the unparalleled resilience of Japanese people. No looting. No plundering. Only footage of them queueing orderly for rations and going about their business with dignity. Control to a T. They couldn’t control what had happened to them, but they chose to respond to this calamity with dignity and grace and resoluteness.

Resoluteness summed up how Victor Frankl survived his time at the concentration camps. In his classic book titled “Man’s Search for Meaning”, he explained that those who survived the concentration camps might not have been the physically strongest, but they seemed to hold on stoically because of their staunch sense of purpose. He himself found meaning in helping his fellow prisoners manage the repercussions that living in a concentration camp entailed.

No matter what obstacles life throws us, we can count our blessings that it is unlikely that we will need to summon our resources to rebuild our lives after a tsunami or prevail through a concentration camp. Nonetheless, knowing that others have been through worse doesn’t really help us bolster our resilience. We need to process this head knowledge before it gets assimilated into our psyche and added to our tool box.

Understanding that building our well of resilience is a journey we ought to embark on before shit hits the fan urges us to stay centered and up our resoluteness. How do we do so? Two words: <travel light>

It isn’t just about embracing minimalism and rejecting the highs induced by owning branded stuff. It’s about trimming the excesses and staying nimble. To this effect, I try to clear my emails promptly. Nothing screams unfinished business than thousands of unread emails. Yes, we can ignore our unread mails and buckle down to producing great work, but they are like the soaking wet pajamas your swimming coach gets you to wear to teach you water safety. Just cognitively heavy like a hippo’s feet.

It means that I stay on top of my digital data, following a system in which I file my photos online and delete them on my phone. Many a time, I keep a photo due to sentimental reasons or a nagging feeling that I will use it for work some day. However, I fail to take into account the opportunity costs. That my mind is cluttered with so many pictures that I ironically don’t get to savour the moments because they are lost in the labyrinth of memories. These days, I retrieve a photo from my phone fairly easily because I actually have a grasp of the moments I keep close to my heart on my phone.

It is about not packing my days to the brim with things to clear so that I leave ample time for sleep. Very often, I choose to forgo sleep in the name of productivity, but if I aim to travel light, I should go about accomplishing things with a relaxed attitude rather than be at the beck and call of Father Time.

Hedonistic adaptation - the process by which positive or negative effects on happiness fade over time - be leveraged to great effect in travelling light. As a teacher, I was so dismayed that my son routinely fell sick during my precious school holidays that I counted the number of holidays he “sabotaged” my well-laid plans. THREE holidays gone to waste! Guess what? He is running a fever now after yesterday’s trip to the aquarium. But since I am so used to the idea of him falling sick on my holidays, I’m not gonna burden my brain by adding up the number of holidays he felt sick anymore. I’m gonna exercise grace and postpone my lunch date with my friend tomorrow because really, what’s the point? If I’m serious about the lunch date, I will make it happen another time, by hook or by crook. No need to clog my heart with bitterness.

Many manuals on writing recommend that we state our most important ideas at the front. Which makes sense, I guess because we can’t assume that our writing is compelling enough for readers to plow through to the end. Still, I wanna do something different from the norm, so I’m gonna state my unorthodox, uniquely Sensei’s habit that may cause you to raise your eyebrows in my conclusion. So, this is how I travel light for reading. Each time I finish a chapter of a book, I will tear the pages off and place them in a bag earmarked for recycling. If you are a book lover, you will gasp at how I’m literally destroying books. But strangely enough, this works really well for me. Incorporating a kinesthetic routine helps stave off boredom from reading, and seeing how my book gets gradually lighter fuels up my motivation to finish it. Observing how my bookshelf acquires more breathing space unclutters my heart a bit more. You just gotta believe me when I say that I really recycle every piece of preloved paper I own!

#firesidephilosophy¹