SEPT 9 — Much as I am loathe to admit it, it feels like my 40s are now separated by “BC/AC” or Before Cancer/After Cancer.

A pandemic, a new major war and a cancer diagnosis are not what I wanted to experience in the fourth decade of my life and now my fifty-something years loom ever closer.

Right now I feel a strange peace.

Now, I’m not about to proclaim that I have reached enlightenment or that I am a candidate for sainthood.

It’s far more mundane than that.

As I continue to spring clean my house, throwing away broken and un-giftable things, I find things I have no recollection of buying, no memory of why I wanted them in the first place.

Besides things I have also let go of something I think most people should learn to — an attachment to outcomes.

Or as Doris Day sang, que sera sera.

I think most people are unhappy because their life or even their sense of self does not conform to very specific notions.

Desire, I think, is a healthy thing and that desire is behind some of the most beautiful things we have but too much of it, twists those things into hideous transmogrifications.

We want what we want; over analyzing desire is a pointless exercise.

Yet I understand that for people in great pain or suffering, such as those living in countries at war, it cannot be easy or perhaps possible to live in a detachment to outcomes.

When you live in conflict, all you can hope for is for that conflict to end, and for you to survive until you see the fulfilment of that hope.

For those not in crisis it is a privilege then to be able to sit with yourself, to be able to look back on your past, your thoughts, your actions and release your emotional ties to them.

I sit on this computer and think, ah, my life has been beautiful. Today there has been occasion for joy. Tomorrow holds promise of more joy.

There is no joy in holding onto my sadness or my grievances and I do not know, but I can hope my cancer remains gone and that tomorrow I don’t get run over by a careless Malaysian driver.

I watched the Chiikawa movie again last week but only to collect the special merch from a screening.

The character I find most endearing in the franchise is Usagi, the rabbit-like creature who will suddenly burst into song or verse and somehow in the past few weeks I have accumulated quite a few mini Usagis.

When Usagi isn’t rapping or happily stuffing its face with food, it is content to just lie around, seeming aimless in its relaxation.

Yet Usagi is also brave, unashamed about expressing itself creatively, also a skilled hunter and diligent in skill-acquiring.

Containing multitudes, indeed.

So I’d rather like to be Usagi — being silly, prone to not taking myself too seriously, not caring to prove anything to anyone (besides myself)... isn’t that a nice state of being?

Before I go off and do some necessary laying about (I volunteered to do far too much writing), I hope that you too find something, some thought that can sustain you in this mad world we live in.

And if all else fails, lie down and let your mind be still and empty, thinking of nothing besides what would be nice for breakfast.

I suggest nasi lemak.