After a few days of wandering the streets of Colombo, with our sweat-soaked clothes stuck to our skin, we finally decided to leave on what they call one of the world’s most scenic train rides, from Colombo to Haputale, deep into the mountainous tea plantation Hill Country.

When we sauntered into the train station one morning, we were greeted by a swarm of people of all ages, dragging luggage of all kinds and sizes.

We found a small spot to stand, perfectly straight and still, and as our train rolled in, we were like a shipwreck carried ashore by the waves of people. We were grateful to have only our backpacks to worry about.

My travel partner got carried into the middle of one of the carriages, and with the instinct of a claustrophobic, I cowered to the side of the wall next to the entry, refusing to get crammed into the carriage that now looked like a sardine can.

When the train chugged out of the station, I caught a glimpse of my partner, towering over everyone like a white lighthouse, and I gave him a nod.

Standing near the exit provided only a minor comfort of fresher air and faster escape in case anything happened. I was pressed flat against the wall, with my backpack between my legs.

As soon as I thought we could not add a single person to this train anymore, we rolled into a station, more people boarded, and more luggage was thrown in. Bags piled between my legs, my backpack lost amongst them, the cold wall pressed through my clothes.

I moved aside along with the rest of the passengers, rearranging ourselves into an ever-changing puzzle. The horn blared, and the train started rolling away, and those still running after to get on board receded. Our collective held breath released as one, and we settled in our new arrangement until the next station.

At one stop, I saw an older woman helping her frail mother up the steps onto the train. The crowd parted in silent reverence, and she got in. The woman pushed two of her young children up behind, presumably their grandmother. Then she threw a few pieces of luggage behind them. My body froze when I heard the horn, staring as the older woman retreated.

My eyes darted to the children and the old woman in front of me and back out to the open door. The woman was running after the train, screaming with her arms outstretched, and somehow she clambered onto the steps, but lost her second footing.

Her arm flailed, searching for the railings. I reached out, grabbed her, and pulled with all my might as she pulled me too. She fell in front of us onto her knees as the scenery outside turned into a line of blur.

She gasped for breath and then looked up — eyes wide, the scare still in them — and recognized me. I smiled and gave a nod.

After that, the space got wider. The noise turned to light chatter.

A guy, who was standing at the enviable position right in front of the door, beckoned me to come over. He stood aside to give me his place. I took a hesitant leap to the spot, my eyes meeting his.

Gesturing at my face, he said, “You—smile—beautiful”, and broke into a wide smile. Then he said he saw me helping the lady.

I looked him in the eye, feeling the blood rush into my cheeks. I turned back to the passing scenery and finally breathed in the cold, fresh air. The rolling lush green hills against the bright blue sky continued to stretch on forever.

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I spent a week in Padova, staying at the home of someone I met while backpacking in Java.

In between, we went to Venice to visit another friend who was studying languages there. With him, conversation flowed easily in English. With my Padovan friend, words trickled.

One afternoon, we wandered through Venice. We talked and laughed, gelato melting in our hands. The city glowed in Venetian red; sunlight shimmered on the canals as we crossed bridge after bridge. Only later, when he took me to a quiet stretch at the edge of Venice overlooking the sea, did I realize that something between us had shifted.

On the last day of my visit, he was away at school. I was packed and found myself sunk deep into a red sofa, its velvety cushion enveloping my hips. His housemate walked in and sat on an adjoining seat.

We started talking and did not stop for hours. It was jyun — the quiet convergence of time and place when two lives meet and something clicks.

When the late afternoon rolled in and the color of the room changed from bright yellow to a warm orangey glow, my body twitched to get off the sofa. I checked my MacBook Air: the train runs every hour towards Florence. I could take the next one, or the next next one—or not.

While my heart was still full from our conversations, my brain instructed my fingers to buy the next train and my mouth to release the last words of farewell.

The time to leave good hospitality is a grace one learns as a seasoned backpacker.

As the train rumbled towards Rome and the red sun hovered above the mountain peak, casting the sky in velvet pink, I retreated into myself. Outside, the world slipped by. Inside, I let the familiar ache of parting settle.

Retreating inward is easy for me. Solitude was once my playground; over time, it became routine, and the path quietly narrowed.

But recently, I stepped away from routine and family for a few days of training. It was refreshing to be untethered—to leave the familiar path.

I had the jyun to stay with someone from training at a villa. We spent the evening away together—the white wine flowed as generously as the conversation.

Just as on the red sofa in Padova, connection found me again on a grey sofa in Switzerland.

The very next day, as if the question had been waiting for the right moment, someone at the training asked me, “What drives human conversation?”

After some deliberation, I answered, “Curiosity.”

In German, we have two words for curiosity—Neugier and Wissbegier—one thirst for novelty, another for knowledge.

Both filled the river where my conversations flowed.

The question about human conversation sprang up while we were discussing how to write better prompts for AI. In other words, how to have better conversations with AI.

What then drives human-AI conversation?

Throughout the day, when I need an answer or some assistance, I prompt the AI and move on. But sometimes, I linger into the late evening, my face lit by the glow on the screen, allowing the conversation to stretch longer than necessary.

In those moments, something tilts. Words arrive in abundance, but nothing moves beneath them.

If I had visited my Padovan friend in another future time, our conversation would not have flowed while we walked the meandering paths and crossed the countless bridges of Venice.

We would not have chanced upon a peddler selling ice cream, and I would not have tried the first and best fig gelato of my life, bought on his recommendation.

We would sit across from each other on a bench, our words translated by AI, the rough edges already smoothed before they reach the other.

The Venetian red no longer serves as a backdrop to the romantic scene of a budding friendship but as a curtain closing off human connection.

That evening, as the train continued to rumble towards Florence, I watched the sky turn violet.

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Connected Essays

Dear Conscious Readers,

The first month of the year is almost over. It seems like the year has just started yesterday, yet it also feels like it’s been a long time.

The days are long, but the years are short.

And that is why I am always astounded when I look back on everything that happened in the past year.

How was 2025 for me, you might ask? It was the year of connection. The idea of word of the year is not to achieve something. It is more like a guiding post for daily life—influencing microdecisions.

Do I call a friend, or do I spend time staring at strangers’ social media posts instead? I called my friend.

Do I continue working alone on a difficult task because I am oh-so-independent and capable, or do I ask a colleague for help or to discuss? I asked a colleague.

Do I lie a little longer in bed with my kids as we talk about what death is, or do I excuse myself to get lost in a book? I stayed in bed and talked the difficult talk.

So yes, there were new connections, there were also deepening of old connections.

It’s not perfect, of course. But it was a daily reminder of the importance of connection throughout the year. And it will continue to run in my life from now.

As for this year, my word of the year is flow. This timeless Tao’s poem was the inspiration:

The supreme goodness is like water.
It benefits all things without contention.
In dwelling, it stays grounded.
In being, it flows to depths.
In expression, it is honest.
In confrontation, it stays gentle.
In governance, it does not control.
In action, it aligns to timing.
It is content with its nature
and therefore cannot be faulted. - via Raymond Tang.

The poem extolls many values beyond what I can embody this year, but I think flow is a good start.

Over the past year, I’ve become aware of the tensions between different parts of my life.

My work in tech pulls me into a world that is fast, future-facing, and deeply energized by AI. It invites curiosity, experiments, and a belief that something new and exciting is emerging.

Yet in my creative writing life, I often find myself surrounded by suspicion of AI. Here, slowness is sacred. Human messiness matters. Attention is something to be protected, not optimized.

Then there is time itself.

My evolving role at work demands more focus, more mental energy, and reaching outward. At the same time, my writing and daily meditations—where I sit with questions of meaning, mortality, and consciousness—ask for more slowness, more presence, and reaching inward.

And threaded through all of this is my family—my children, my partner. They don’t just want the time that remains; they ask for my undivided attention, my whole self.

How much more can one person split themselves? I do not know.

And thus emerges the word flow. If every part of my life means something to me, and they are me. So why should they be competing? Why aren’t they integrating?

Why not let my energy flow through them, back and forth, back and forth? Each feeding into the other rather than stealing and draining in the process?

That is my hope with flow.

If at work, I am pondering how AI is now changing the world, then that is what I will be writing about. If I started thinking about death because my 4-year-old asked me, “Do I have to be flat when I am dead?” after an encounter with a squashed spider, then that is what I will be writing about. If what I read lately made me cry or question the reality we are living in right now, then that is what I will be writing about.

But what would that mean for this newsletter?

Maybe it’s a longing to feel rooted in the present, a desire to rediscover yourself, or a curiosity about what it means to live with intention and forge deeper connections with others and the world. - A journey to conscious living, together.

It will all still be the same. Conscious living means rediscovering oneself, living with intention, and forging a deeper connection. Having found what it means to live consciously and how that is the key to happiness, it will still be the heartbeat of all that I am writing.

But I do think it’s time for a reset, for a change of name. Well, the new year beckons for that, and also, after two years of writing, I feel it is time for it too. And as flow dictates, the name change will come as it comes in time, and when energy permits, so stay tuned.

Until the next letter, I wish you a good start to the year and, for some of you, a good preparation for the coming Chinese New Year!

Consciously yours,
Rachel

This time, instead of my usual thoughts and recommendations, I’m sharing a small roundup of my favourite pieces from the past two years of this newsletter. I’ve always loved reading these yearly roundups from my favourite writers, and I hope you’ll enjoy this one too.

My personal favourites

What success truly means

Finding connection in a divided world

How a little bird taught me to love and let go

The ones that run close to home

Should you ask me where I am from?

The letters that changed my life

Motherhood is a contradiction

Literary explorations

Raintown

Two of my favourite conscious living practices

Reflections and gratitudes

What truly matters

Other popular posts

The magic of literature

The hidden power of names

For a brief moment of lightness, I became heavy

The conscious living practice series ended half a year ago. Somehow, it did not resonate with my readers or me as much as I had hoped. But, as the year comes to an end, I find myself looking for my own year-end practice again. So I thought I'd resend it to you, long-time readers, or share it with the new ones. I hope it helps you end the year more consciously.

This will be my last post of the year. Until next year, with my bimonthly letter, I wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

How many of you have a long list of reflections and gratitudes by now?

Maybe you’re like me—still working on it—and that’s completely okay! What matters is that we’ve been more mindful over the past two weeks and taken small steps toward reflection.

Life tends to get busy these weeks as the festive season approaches. Decorate the Advent Kranz, get mini gifts, and hang up the Advent calendar. Decide on gifts and who will receive them. Make and send Christmas cards. Bake Christmas cookies.

Our family also has three birthdays to celebrate around this time! Yes, that's the story of our lives. One birthday celebration down, we have three more parties to go: one for each child with their friends, and one with the family.

Amidst all this busyness, I’ve found that taking even a few moments to reflect on the past year can bring clarity and calm.

Pre-Practice

If you have your reflection list, skip this pre-step and go straight to the practice.

For those who want to gather reflections quickly, find an uninterrupted time for reflection, and focus only on this year. This keeps the task manageable.

Set a due date—perhaps this weekend or by Christmas—to complete your reflection session

Use a 30-minute timer and start looking through your chosen resources (calendar, photos, journals, notebooks, planners) for reflections, and write down any points that you deem noteworthy.

This is what I did to assemble a list quickly.

Since I plan everything in my life on the calendar, it is a good way to recall what I've done and see all the meaningful events. For some of you, it may be your planner or to-do list.

At the same time, as I reviewed each month, I looked through my photo album to recall events I might have missed!

To give you an idea, here’s what my list looked like after following this process:

1. Celebrated my kid’s birthday with Oma and Opa.

2. Started 1-1 dates with my kids.

3. Consistent lunch dates with my partner during the week.

4. I launched this Conscious Living Substack and wrote a lot this year, reconnecting with my passion, connecting with myself, and processing it all through writing.

5. We went on a boat trip down the Neckar Valley with Oma, Opa, aunts, uncles, and cousins. All the kids were very excited but surprisingly well-behaved.

6. Lots of spring and autumn walks and hikes.

7. Friendship reunion trip in Bali!

8. Spent precious time with the old loved ones— Mummy, Lai Ma, and Lai Pa. We did some deep talking with the Parents Are Humans cards.

9. Family beach holiday in Majorca.

10. Built tanglungs (lanterns) with the kids together and did a walk during the Mid-Autumn festival1.

11. Monthly catch-up calls with my girls–an initiative born from our reunion trip.

12. I made lovely connections here on Substack.

13. I did the writing protocol to deal with my grief over my father’s death.

14. Writing about conscious living brought back this core meaning of my life to the forefront.

15. I attended several training sessions at work, which rekindled my passion for learning.

Here’s what we are going to do

For Conscious Living practice #2, you should have a list of reflections and gratitude to reflect on.

For beginners

Find a cozy spot with a warm drink and sit down with your notebook or laptop. Read through your reflection lists without judgment. Just read it for what it is.

Next, choose your top 5 to 10 entries—they resonate deeply, repeat themselves across the list, or stand out to you. Circle or summarize them in a shorter list.

Like me, I noticed I had listed several events and celebrations with Oma and Opa, and I had mentioned my gratitude to them on multiple occasions. I mentioned all the 1-1 connections in my little family, with kids and my partner. I was thankful for my summer trip back home, reconnecting with my friends on our Bali trip, and afterward, my mother, nanny, and her husband in my hometown. I am also grateful for the new connections I made here on Substack. Thanks to my Conscious Living publication on Substack, I was proud and happy to start writing again. I felt reconnected to myself, especially in my pursuit of conscious living.

In your top list, go through it again and try to find a pattern. Here are some questions that may help you:

• What motivates you?

• Does this reflect a value you cherish?

• What do you want more or less of?

• Who matters most to you, and how are you nurturing those relationships?

• What’s most important to you, and how are you prioritizing it?

• What sparks your curiosity?

• What’s one goal you’d like to pursue?

“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.” - Goethe.

For seasoned practitioners

Like the last round, I have an option for some of you who are used to this exercise. After you have answered the prompts, try distilling your answers into a word or a short phrase. This will be your “word of the year.”

For example, Gretchen Rubin reflects on why she chose “Door” as her word of the year. For her, it was a time of transition and expectation. To me, it is also a beautiful visual metaphor for opening up new opportunities and adventures.

Your word might be a noun, a verb, or an adjective. There’s no wrong way to pick as long as it’s meaningful to you. - Gretchen Rubin

As for me, the pattern became clear on what my word of the year would be—Connection.

I want to deepen my connections with my partner, children, family, friends, and myself. I also want to extend my connection to nature and the world at large.

This word also aligns well with my ethos of conscious living. To connect, we need to be present, and being connected helps us stay grounded in that state, too.

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

We were all gathered for Grandma’s 93rd birthday for a feast. I was sitting towards one of the corners of the table. The active banter from my partner and his whole lot of family and relatives, the squeals from the kids, and the pitter-patter of their feet faded into a hum.

Suddenly, I detached from where I was. I looked at myself, a woman very out of place, surrounded by people who looked nothing like her and spoke in a language she did not grow up in.

What is she doing there? How did she get there?

Look at the little girl she once was—huddled in a corner of a little house on a small dot of north peninsular Malaysia, reading her way into faraway lands and fantasy worlds—no one could ever draw a straight line from her to the woman she is now.

No doubt, as the little girl closed the book to Heidi, a seed was planted, and it’ll be three decades before she drives past the Alps with the love of her life, wondering how she got here. And from all the worlds she explored, imagined or real, that same seed sprouted—and she would go on adventures to every corner of the world.

But still, no one, certainly not even herself, could have imagined she would end up traveling the world solo, moving across continents, learning a new language, and raising children in a foreign land, straddling the mixed cultures she grew up in.

Somewhere in between, life rose into itself, lost itself, and found its way back again—revealing what truly mattered and what didn’t.

Back then, after I quit my day job to reclaim my life, my first instinct was to achieve financial freedom. I carried within me the old pull of self-sustenance, passed down by my great-grandparents as they sailed across the South China Sea to the Promised Land in search of a better life, leaving everything they knew behind.

This blood of self-reliance, of trust in self, of hope in life, and of courage to pursue, will forever flow in me.

Even though—spoiler—I did not achieve financial freedom as planned, I have learned so much more. I learned what it meant to be sentenced to freedom, and how to handle it effectively, authentically, and responsibly.

I learned I needed routine. I set the alarm clock so I could wake before the sun reached its peak overhead. I learned the cost of every yes—yes to a friend’s social call, yes to a family or friend’s crisis management, and yes to yet another book.

All the extra time I saved from commuting, I spent working out in my studio apartment, looking out at the long chain of cars on the freeway—where once, I was one of the links. These little moments reminded me why I chose a different path.

A path that strayed from the script handed to me: study hard, get the degree, land a big-company job, and be set for life.

This script took shape over generations since my ancestors set roots in the Promised Land. It was a recipe for a better life, but happiness asks for different ingredients.

Somehow deep down, I knew the recipe wasn’t for me. I did not want a 9-5 grind in the rat race. I devoured Rich Dad, Poor Dad1 like it was an almanac—it confirmed everything I already suspected, though let’s be honest, he never would have done it without the Rich Dad.

Most of us don’t have one, and so, like the rest, I joined the rat race. I hopped from job to job, each time getting more and more money, but to what end?

I had a quarter-life crisis at 25—a privilege that is not lost on me. By then, I was earning more than I needed, alone without children, and my parents were still healthy and working. I had enough time to pause and think.

Is that all there is?

Before I could answer, everything happened almost at once—my grandmother passed away, my five-year relationship ended, and soon after, I fulfilled my childhood dream of visiting my godsister in the UK, only to have the trip cut short when my father underwent his third open-heart surgery.

It took everything in me to hand over all my savings for it. I was raised on scarcity, raised to believe that money was the key to happiness.

But in hindsight, it was nothing. I did not miss the money at all. And it bought my father another fifteen years of life. It was priceless. I would have given it all again—and more, if I could—to buy him another fifteen. But that option never returned.

Life’s up. No more hearts. Game over.

This wake-up call became both a test and a blessing. I threw away the recipe and spent years flitting in and out of contract jobs, and lived most days on the road. I still look back fondly on those times. My heart warmed; my lips curled.

I was meant to travel, to explore, to get lost, to wander, and to wonder. I was meant to be a vagabond. Or so I thought, until I found myself making a home in a foreign country and even having children.

My partner and I met on the road. In time, my path shifted, and with him I found a home—a place to settle for a while and start a family. Some days, I still wonder about the path we chose; I still ache, now and then, for my carefree vagabond days.

But if you ask me, would I do it all over again? Yes—and yes a thousand times over.

I would cross the oceans, learn a new language, and navigate a foreign land to be with him. I would be a lonely first-time mother out of my element, enduring night after night of sleeplessness and long hours of breastfeeding, just to look into those little trusting eyes. All over again.

The days were long, but the years were short. They still are, though they seem to grow shorter and shorter.

What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

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After meditating on connection and its meaning, I now turn to how it lives in practice—being here now, being there then, always having been somewhere at some point in time.

If you’ve been enjoying this series and want to follow along — or support future pieces — just hit the button below.

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In an age of constant connection at our fingertips, your attention wanders before you notice it.

Everyday rituals slip by—the sound of the trickling coffee, the smell rising before the first sip. The crisp morning air on the way to work, the cold wind caressing your cheeks.

Precious moments go unnoticed—your child’s eyes widening as they remember once again that purple is their favourite, not pink. Their small finger curled around your wrist, warm and impossibly soft, as they seek your full attention.

You’ve spent too much time being elsewhere without realizing what you have traded it for.

Are you there?

***

Country roads,

Take me home,

to the place

I belong…

- John Denver

You first heard the song as a young child, back when it was just an easy sing-along. Its meaning surfaced only years later—after trying, again and again, to make a home in places that seemed like it could be it, but felt wrong after.

So you kept moving, farther and farther from home. You searched across the world, wandering, looking, never setting root.

And even as you went full circle and came back via all the country roads to where you came from, to mountain mama, to the rolling hills hugging your rain-drenched town, you realized it was not what you thought it was anymore.

Sometimes what you long for, when the music rolls with “to the place I belong”, isn’t a place, but a time. A feeling that once seemed whole. Or an idea that never was and never could be.

Are you still there?

***

The internet provides a constant connection to your loved ones wherever you are. It is but a ghostly connection.

You are always there. But are you?

Your first encounter with deliberate disconnection was when you hit the road for the first time.

You had long been scrolling aimlessly through Facebook feeds and tweeting your thoughts in 140 characters. Instagram was a newly discovered indie tool, and WhatsApp was a second home.

You were told there would be no running water or internet for the next two weeks on the road in Mongolia. Your eyes went wide, not for the lack of water, but the loss of connection.

After a week without a shower, you and your travel companions sighed with relief from the gushing cold water. But as you took out your phone on your return to Ulanbataar at the end of the trip, it felt heavier than you remembered.

Another time of disconnection was during your 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat. The loss of connection was surprisingly not missed by anyone.

It was liberating. It was displacing. It was also comforting. Life goes on—with or without you.

Sometimes you have to disconnect to reconnect.

You are not there. But when you are back, you will be all there.

***

Yesterday evening, someone lit a small bonfire in front of my son’s school. We had just walked the neighbourhood with lanterns in our hands for St. Martin’s day1—children, parents, and teachers all together like little stars wandering the earth.

We halted at the fire, mid-track, marching to the Glühwein stand. It crackled in the dark, drawing us in. Even my boisterous three-year-old stood still beside me.

There’s something about fire.

Fire has gathered us time and time again—at a camp in France, by a hut in the Black Forest, on Pulau Sembilan beach in Malaysia, and in a living room in Harrismith, South Africa.

Fire soothes the way nature does. It reaches into something older—rooted in our blood, carried by those who came before us.

It grounds us. Brings us back to now.

A fire, offering safety with warmth and light, speaks in a language older than words.

We’ve always gathered around it—to celebrate, to contemplate, and to connect—as those before us did, beneath the same moon.

We were there then. We are still there.

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I remember a night, many lives ago, somewhere in Cambodia. I pushed the wedged lime into the bottle and watched the fizzy sparkle of Corona beer rise, catching the dim orange bar light.

The stranger-turned-friend for the evening sat across from me, his deep-set eyes twinkling, his faint stubble moving slightly on his sun-warmed skin as he raised his Corona to his lips.

The evening stretched into the night, full of conversations ranging from life’s anecdotes to the secrets of the universe.

The time to leave came unannounced, and he graciously walked me back to my hostel. I remember his silhouette under the flickering orange lamp, giving me a wave as I looked back one last time before entering the building.

The Chinese have a term called 缘分 (jyun fan).

Jyun is the predestined affinity between people—the invisible thread that ties two lives at the right time and the right place. It’s the uncanny event where two people come together at the same time and place, with the same wavelength to connect.

Fan is the share of destiny—the thread that binds—the measure of how long and how deeply it will hold.

Jyun can bring connections during a cramped five-hour plane ride, under dim bar lights, or in a few whirlwind adventure days. However it starts, they carry the same urgency—to reach across and connect as deeply as possible before it’s over.

They are brief, yet meaningful—leaving one changed permanently in the subtlest way. They add patterns to the tapestry of life.

But jyun is also the force that brought you to whom and where you were born—the cosmic connective tissue of relationships.

It’s the familiar voice at the wake-up morning call. The knowing glance as we come up to no good. The surrendering smile at our hundredth mischief. The hug that carries the warmth of a thousand hugs.

And fan is the force that made them lifelong connections—some given, some chosen. They are the original patterns in the tapestry of birth, and those we have chosen to weave in continuously through life.

They give you a sense of self. They are the proof that you are you; you are here, you are something to someone, and you are a melody in someone’s life’s music.

I remember the light filtering through the grilled window, gliding over the marble tiles, where stones of different shapes and sizes—black, pink, and gold—were lodged within each large slab. I marveled at their uniqueness as I lay on the cool marble, letting it draw the day’s heat from my body.

Despite their individuality, they were all connected within the larger marbles that came together to form the floor of my tiny house.

I remember the rustle of willow leaves in the wind, bending over, caressing the shimmering lake under the relentless sun. The heat burned my skin, the damp clung to it, unsoothing. I remember the smell of the asphalt after a brief rainstorm, and the fog hanging low in the surrounding mountain range, like a blanket fort in bed.

The wind carried the clouds; they fell as rain, filling the lake, and the heat lifted it all back into the sky. Everything was connected. And the little girl could only marvel at each turn of nature’s wonder.

I remember the rumble of the train and the hard wooden bench beneath me, rocking gently left and right like a cradle. The train chugged through the countryside, the engine roaring past paddy fields and coconut trees. The wind whistled through the half-open windows, which slid neither up nor down. I remember two French men sitting across the aisle from us, looking as out of place as we were.

Why were we seated here together among the locals in this long train, rolling through Myanmar? Did the ticket seller plan it? Was it a coincidence? We would never know. But for that time in that contained carriage, we were connected—plunging toward the same destination.

I remember zipping down my tiny tent perched on the precipice of Drakensberg, and being greeted in awe by a stretch of purple, pink, blue, and gold swirls splashed across the black sky—the Milky Way. I remember dragging my sleeping bag out into the open—the same one that had gone up to the highest pass in Nepal and back with me—searching for a flat rock to lay it on. I remember lying in there, snug, the rocks pinching my back, my heart held warm with the wonder above me.

I was propelled across time and space, back to before existence and far forward beyond it. We are but one pulse in this vast universe. We are part of this fabric of what we call reality. We are connected to this network of life, of energy—the cosmos.

“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” - Carl Sagan.

I remember my son flailing his slender newborn arms, his mouth pecking blindly against my breasts, searching for the source of milk. The warmth of his skin on mine, the slow rise and fall of his breath, the sudden twitch of his legs. I remember his face after feeding, eyes barely open, the lips curved faintly in imitation of a smile.

I held him close and wondered, have I been here before? Was I the mother or the child? We are connected.

I remember my father lying on the bed, looking frailer than I have ever known him; the COVID year had not been easy on him. His cheeks were sunken, his neck unnaturally long, his eyebrows casting shadows over his dark, hollow eyes. I held his arm, the green and purple veins visible through his thin skin, branching like roots. Words piled up like a derailed train in my throat. None came.

After the long struggle to bring him home, the time for him to leave had come. I remember his body lying there, softly visible in the dim orange light of the room, giving no more sign of life, as I checked on him one last time before leaving the room to tell everyone.

Connected Essays

It has been a while, and the summer holiday has come and gone.

Since moving across the Indian Ocean to Germany, this season always feels like an interlude. It is neither here nor there.

Should I slow down because it is the summer holidays—end of school, start of long breaks—and start anew in September? Even at work, everything slowed to a lull.

Then again, mid-year is when I usually gear up. It’s also my birthday, and I use this time to review my intentions—how I wish to spend my days, and with whom—and my aspirations.

Meanwhile, my son just started school—the excitement!—and it marks a new era in our family. And maybe, sometime next year, I will finally settle into this new seasonal rhythm the Europeans followed.

I come from Malaysia, where I tell people here cheekily, “It is always summer there”. This usually sparks envy, painting a dreamy picture of Malaysia. In truth, it’s hot, balmy, and the rains come often and hard. But they don’t need to know the details.

Gasp! How do people even live in accordance with phases and seasons? We don’t. After three decades in Malaysia, I devised my own.

The year starts with our contemporary calendar year, and it will only truly begin after we celebrate the Chinese New Year. Then, I conduct a mid-year check-in with myself on my birthday, and from then on, it’s a home run until the end of the year.

Here, summer asks me to do two opposite things: pause for rest, but also reflect and gear up for what’s ahead. No wonder I feel a little dissonance.

In the future, I will defer my reflections and plans until after the summer break. In this way, the Chinese New Year may well reflect a better start to the year.

Do you think the Chinese know when the real New Year is? Is the Lunisolar calendar more aligned with the seasons? Possibly.

So yeah, that is my long way of saying that I am back! Did I have a good break? I did. There have been good shifts at work, too, though they’ve taken much of my mental energy.

However, I am now ready to write again, and I have a series coming up. I hope you will enjoy it.

For those in the northern hemisphere, I hope summer has treated you kindly; for those in the south, may winter have been cozy; and for my fellow Asians at the equator, let me remind you—it’s well past mid-year, and time for some internal seasonal change!

So wherever you are in the world, I hope this season brings you your own kind of renewal.

Consciously yours,
Rachel

As always, I'd like to share some thoughts from my reading and reflection space—ideas that have resonated with me recently.

For conscious living

AI and life

I cannot resist writing about AI again. Everybody is talking about AI. This was my response to recently about how he uses ChatGPT and how it is dividing the creative world.

I find it interesting how reluctant artists are to this new technology. Since I work in tech, I utilize AI extensively in almost everything. I have yet to hear a programmer complain that a program is no longer beautiful or meaningful because it was made with the help of AI.

Until we have an AI that can think for itself, everything will still be driven by humans. There will still be a soul behind it.

Undividing with Karl Dunn

ChatGPT vs The Creative Soul - Undividing #40

Welcome to Undividing where we are reconnecting a divided world…

Read more

7 months ago · 54 likes · 36 comments

Fellow Malaysian said that AI has helped refuel her energy to write fiction, and she shared this, knowing she will face backlash.

Tai Tales

What if using AI to write fiction isn't an evil act?

PS: This issue will be paywalled a few days after it is published…

Read more

8 months ago · 24 likes · 39 comments · Elizabeth Tai

Connecting with family and friends

Recently, I felt a keen disconnection from my friends from abroad. I noticed that talking to people who have known you for a long time is different from talking to people who have just met you. Or maybe I was just slow in deepening friendships, and time was my ally.

So I started making more one-on-one calls with friends whenever possible. With so many of these meetings at work nowadays, it makes sense to have some with family and friends as well.

What do you all think?

Leave a comment

For sharing

How to prove you were born four decades ago in Bangladesh

Once I read the title of this essay from one of my favourite writers on Substack, , I went “oh-oh,”.

This is because I had my fair share of dealing with bureaucracy in Germany—the absurdity of trying to prove something you know inherently to be true, and the need for an arbitrary person to approve it to make it true. Not to give any spoilers, read it and find out what happened!

On the side, Istiaq might have also planted a seed in my head about having a sabbatical before my kids turn teenagers and want nothing to do with us anymore. Malaysia, of course, comes to mind….

Why can’t we have a four-day work week?

Thanks to for bringing up this topic, which had been on my mind even before COVID-19 came along and halted the world in its frantic pursuit of progress and consumerism.

But as predicted, the world went back into its usual spinning immediately, though with a change. Now, fully remote, hybrid, or flextime work arrangements are the norm. We will no longer settle for anything less in our jobs.

What would it take to finally nudge everyone into a four-day work week? Because, let’s face it, besides the service or the production industry, we all can do our job in four days easily.

Fewer coffee breaks, less brain-recuperating during office hours, or sneaking in errands and doctor appointments because we have more time in the week to rest, connect, and put our personal lives in order.

Would you embrace a four-day work week?

Leave a comment

You might have missed this since our last letter:

Thank you for staying with me during my absence and for reading all the way through. If you’re excited about my upcoming series on conscious living, I’d be so grateful if you hit the button to subscribe—or even upgrade—to support this work. It helps me justify the time I pour into writing here, and keeps this space alive.

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We rescued a burung pipit once—a Eurasian tree sparrow, ubiquitous in Malaysia, especially in our small town, where daily rain kept the surrounding mountains lush.

You’ll find them chirping in chorus among trees, perching on parked cars, skipping through blades of cow grasses, teetering on electrical wires, and pecking at leftover rice and noodles on hawker centre tables. Usually, you’ll hear the frantic flap of their wings as they dart away before you can get a good look at them, a speck of brown blurring into the distance.

This particular sparrow, however, did not fall from a tree. It fell from a nest that its mother, against nature, built at a narrow slit below the zinc roof of our porch, sprawled on the cold tiles, still raw-looking like all newborns do, pink with translucent skin, clearly not of this world. Not yet. Our eternal tropical heat hung around, clinging to our damp skin.

My sister was the one who found it and alerted me with a loud, frantic call. When I first laid my eyes on it, my maternal instinct kicked in—if you can call it that for a girl just entering puberty. I resolved to rescue this bird at all costs.

I briefly considered if we could sneak it back into the nest above, a tangle of sticks and straws poking out from under the roof. I heard once that when a fallen bird is returned to its nest, the mother won’t embrace it—the taint of foreign scent marking it as an other. It might have been a myth, but at that time, I was so sure of it that I knew I had to become its mother.

I took her into our verandah, a tiled space extending from our living room through the sliding door into the porch, enclosed by a tall metal grill from floor to ceiling, meant to keep danger out, though it always felt more like it was keeping us in. I hesitated to lay her fragile naked body on the shoe rack at the end of the wall.

Then, the idea came to me—I would make her a little house out of paper. My Ah Ma had taught me how to fold an origami open box, which she used at the table for food scraps like prawn shells and peanut husks. It was her clever way to wash less and clean up more easily.1

After deftly folding one, I laid my new baby in the cozy makeshift home. I fed her some water with a teaspoon, and it seemed to work. But she kept squeaking, head cocked and beak wide open. I’d seen that gesture before—on documentaries, when chicks begged for food from their mother, usually worms. But I'm not going to get some worms, I'm too domesticated for that.

I rummaged through the kitchen and settled on an oat biscuit, smashing it into soft, sticky clumps. Using a toothpick like a mother bird’s beak, I fed her.

It worked! The baby bird ate some and seemed very contented. I was so proud of myself.

I named her Tweety, after the yellow bird in a cartoon of its namesake. I’d long told people that it was my favorite cartoon character, though I’m not sure I ever liked it that much. But once claimed, I held onto it stubbornly. So the baby sparrow became Tweety.

Tweety grew steadily as days went by. She began climbing out of her paper house and hopped around the table. As days turned to weeks, she expanded her range to our sofa and the armchairs, claiming the living room one launch at a time. Much to my mother’s horror, Tweety left droppings everywhere. So, I covered the sofa and armchairs with newspapers.

I watched her with pride and fascination as she grew stronger each day, unfolding into a grown bird.

By then, my father got tired of shuffling newspapers to find a spot on the sofa, rather than reading them in peace. He came back with a metal cage, the size of a large tissue box. I never knew where he got it from—clearly custom-made by hand, no doubt recently, with twisted wires.

He grabbed Tweety and tried to shove her through the opening at the top, and poor Tweety, I've never seen her in such a grave panic, flapping her wings frantically as if she were drowning. I leapt up, screaming, and put a stop to my father’s attempt. The cage was promptly taken away and was never to be seen again.

And so, Tweety continued her escapades around the living room unabated. I continued as a proud mama— fed her with my toothpick beak, filled the dish with water, and refreshed the newspapers daily.

One day, as I was sitting there half reading, half watching Tweety hop-fly around, I sensed a shift in her. She was standing on the coffee table, back straight and looking out of our sliding door into the verandah and beyond. I looked in that direction and saw another Eurasian sparrow perched on our verandah grill. My eyes darted back to Tweety, who, at that moment, chirped and zipped off with the sparrow, the air still humming with the beat of her wings.

And with that, Tweety was gone. Without a goodbye. Without a backward glance.

I sat there for a while, stunned at first, and grieved the next. For a foolish instant, I believed that Tweety would return after a short outing, but I knew there was no way she could find her way back.

Would she even remember me?

I then consoled myself that she had found her companion and would now live a happy and fulfilling birdy life. And that it was for the best. A living room is not a life for a bird.

But would she know how to survive in the wild? In my foolish young love, I had not thought to teach her the true bird ways. How would she find food? Would she even eat worms? How would she find shelter? I can only hope her newfound friend, or maybe even a community, would aid her.

Maybe this is how we all deal with love and loss. Maybe this is how we grieve.

We gave all when we could, nourishing and nurturing our love when they needed us, but also ensuring their freedom at all costs. And someday, when the time has passed, our loved one may move on or may have changed.

Grief may keep us clinging to the hope they’ll return to as they were, but at some point, acceptance arrives. That part of life has passed, and now a new one begins.

It helps to stay positive and trust that it’s for the better. And when doubts creep in about whether we did enough with the time we had, there’s comfort in knowing we gave our best.

In time, we move on to something new, something different. That's the natural course of things.

Many months later, I was once again sitting on the armchair, reading on a typical hot, humid day. The birds chirped in choruses, the wind rustled the leaves, and the sunlight trickled in through our half-opened sliding door, casting a kaleidoscope of shadows on the cool marble floor.

A sudden flutter broke the air, loud and purposeful. My heart skipped a beat as I looked up. Tweety perched on the verandah grill, almost at the exact spot where her companion was.

The moment stood still—the sounds dimmed, the light intensified, and the bars of the grill faded into the background.

She looked me in the eyes, as if to tell me something. But before I could respond, she fluttered away. Again.

I smiled and said in my heart, “You're welcome.”

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When I first learned to read, I was at a time in my life when I needed to escape from where I was. With a flip of a book cover, I could escape into the snowy Alps with Heidi, or explore the magical land above the magic faraway tree, or float along with James and his friends atop a giant peach.

I am not the only one who escaped into the world of books when I was young; they have long been a refuge for others. Many protagonists I’ve read do the same, and in those moments, I felt connected to them—like Matilda, in the book of the same name by Roald Dahl.

Although I didn’t teach myself to read or walk to the library in secret like Matilda, I did something similar. After learning to read in Kindergarten (bless the teachers), I pestered my mother to take me there, usually on weekends when she had a bit of time off from her full-time job.

It’s only a 5-minute drive—pass the Chinese cemetery, and then through stooping raintrees over quiet roads along glistening lakes—to the Lake Garden, where the library is located.

If I had not been scared so much about never walking out of the house alone—more scared of the living than the dead—I might have walked there daily, just like Matilda.

I recall my first time entering the library —a neoclassical colonial bungalow built in 1880.

The building stood tall as I approached, with columns supporting a high-ceilinged verandah featuring arched openings. The wide eaves and elevated structure allowed natural airflow, offering relief from the tropical heat.

Pushing through the large, heavy wooden door felt like entering a secret place. Inside, always cool and calm, with ceilings as high as the sky, and space as wide as the fields, it was a sanctuary.

The librarian greeted me from behind a formidable desk; she held the power to choose which magic I could take with me home. Initially, she ushered me to the young children's section, where the shelves were lower and a carpet invited us to sit and read.

But once I had exhausted the books from that area—particularly all the Enid Blyton books—I ventured out and traversed the rows and rows of books, giddy with the prospect of discovering a treasure.

As I roamed, I noticed a slim, green-covered book at the end of one of the endless bookshelves, its edges tattered and worn, the pages brown. It was The Lord of the Flies, and I don’t remember what compelled me to borrow it. Nobody questioned if I was old enough for it, and it haunted me long after I had read it.

It was undoubtedly a masterful work. Its words held power beyond my young understanding, and they altered who I was forever. Its effect still reverberates in my mind.

And that is the magic of words. The magic of literature. And that is why I write.

I write to make magic. To change minds. To communicate. To connect.

I write to connect with my innermost self, to allow the subconscious to speak and the conscious to listen. Some beliefs may no longer serve us—outdated views, assumed truths, inherited patterns. Writing lays bare the soul, reveals the mind’s workings, and rewrites the deep operating system of the self. A kind of mental defragmentation. A reconstruction of the beliefs that shape us.

I write because I must. My mind has filled with words, rising like mountains ever since I learned to read. If I don’t let them out, they’ll erupt like a volcano, laying destruction in their wake. Writing opens up space within the mountain, letting words flow like waterfalls, sometimes gushing, sometimes trickling, constantly flowing into a glistening lake, then onward through rivers of consciousness, into the ocean of the universe.

This is why I write

I write for the ancestors, long gone—a belated letter of sorts. Somehow, somewhere, they would receive it, in ways we cannot perceive. There is still so much we do not know about this world, this universe.

I write for my parents, dead and alive, even if they would not or could not read it. And even if they do, they might not understand, but I write for them anyway.

I write for my children, so they would know who their mother is, and where they ultimately come from and are shaped by.

I write for you so that something in my words might resonate with you. Although only we can truly know ourselves, I hope we feel a little less alone and a little more understood.

It’s an invitation. The writer is saying to the reader, “Come along with me while I tell you a few things and explore a few ideas.” The writer is saying, “Come a little closer and I’ll confide in you about a few things.”

The hope is those confidences will inspire the reader to unearth some of his own feelings or insights. - Meghan Daum, via The Marginalian

I also write to myself. To the girl I was, so she sees how far she’s come. To the woman I will become, so she remembers where she came from.

This is why I write.

Storytelling, as Ursula Le Guin reminds us, is how we find our place in the world.

Storytelling is a tool for knowing who we are and what we want, too. If we never find our experience described in poetry or stories, we assume that our experience is insignificant

And so we keep on writing, paying attention, observing, contemplating, and making sense of things, and communicating them to others.

This is how we tell stories of ourselves, create memories, and sometimes, make a difference in someone else's life.

We write to feel less lonely, more significant. We write to be present in the world, with others, and with ourselves. We write to live more consciously.

Happy Friday!

You might recall that I once sneaked out to check out an exhibition, stumbled upon serendipitously, leaving my children with their father at the playground. It was such an unexpected, rejuvenating, though brief artist date.

Since then, I’ve been searching for more art experiences, which led me to the Freiburg Biennale this month. I was thrilled to learn that my humble city also hosts an art biennale. My first experience with them was in Singapore, followed by Venice, the mother of all art biennales.

Last Sunday, risking heatstroke on one of the record-breaking hottest days of the year, I dragged my family out to get a dose of culture and art.

We welcomed the coolness of the Kunstverein (Art Gallery) as we stepped in from the heat. Inside, it’s all white with ceilings reaching up to the sky, with a second-floor mezzanine skirting the walls. It felt like we had walked into a blank canvas, ready to be painted as we wished.

My kids were instantly thrilled to see two giant copper prawns suspended in the air. Shortly after, they were distracted by a wavy screen showing an artist exploring an old Roman building, half-submerged in water. The power of a screen cannot be denied. After that, they were quickly bored, and my daughter's energy had dipped dangerously low—lunch is imminent.

After lunch, we braved the heat again to visit an old public toilet converted to host various artistic exhibitions throughout the year. It was a little unnerving to be hanging out in a public toilet, even if it is no longer in use.

Then we headed to the Skulpturenpark (sculpture park). We got lucky because one of the artists happened to be there, and he gave us an impromptu guide through the park. My children’s favourite in the end was jumping up and down on beanbags at a Beach Bar mockup.

The Freiburg Biennale’s theme is “The Happy Place”. It explores tourism and how, at the front, it is all about leisure, fun, and joy, but behind the scenes, it is at the cost of many through slavery, poverty, colonialism, transforming cultures, and compromising values. They call it the “cruel optimism”.

A quote by Agnes Essonti Luque, displayed with a series of photographs, struck me:

Where is a happy place for you? Have you ever wondered what the costs are to make it possible?

Do share your thoughts with me. I wish you a meaningful and artistic weekend!

Consciously yours,
Rachel

For conscious living

Nostalgia and melancholy

As I wrote an essay about my beloved hometown, the one place I truly felt I belonged, the one place I could call home, and the one place I would love to answer the question of where I am from, I experienced a mixture of nostalgia and melancholy. And I wonder, what are these feelings? In the movie Inside Out 2, twice Nostalgia—depicted as an old lady with a cane—came out from her room to join the crew, and was quickly ushered back in by Anxiety, saying, “You’re not supposed to be here yet.”

Does nostalgia then come with age? When we have grown old enough and have distanced ourselves enough from the past, a past we possibly wish to revisit or long for, but know we can never have it again. It won’t be the same. The places change. The people change. We change. At some point, nostalgia spills over into melancholy, and sometimes I struggle to differentiate between the two. I am a melancholic person. My favourite season is autumn. I like to dwell in bittersweet emotions. What about you?

For sharing

I have these memories by

I enjoyed following as she walked down her memory lane, vividly describing pockets of scenes.

I have these memories of riding our bikes along the river trail with Baba at the front, weaving between the walkers and the Canada Geese and smelling the breeze off the water and speeding up so we could pass each other and coming home smelling of sweat and dirt and victory.

Love Letter #2: Chance & Courage by

With all the posts I’m seeing about America lately, what about a love letter to it instead?

So, what was your greatest gift to me?

It wasn't wealth.

It wasn't power.

It was this:

The sacred and terrifying freedom to begin again.

In case you missed it, here are some essays and conscious living practices I’ve sent since the last letter:

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Thank you for reading Conscious Living, where we explore how to live intentionally in the present while connecting with our past, the people around us, and the world at large.

This essay took longer than expected—notwithstanding a family holiday in between—but also because I challenged myself with ’s fantastic writing intensive on The Power of Place. ’s post Hometowns also inspired me to dig deeper into where we came from, though I’ve only scratched the surface here.

And thus this little ode was born. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

Consciously yours,
Rachel

We knew no other place than this, where the blue and orange light of dawn peeks through the surrounding dark purple hills, piercing the thick fog left behind by the humid tropical night, where ancestors still search for their descendants, descendants who no longer remember them.

Cows moan, frogs croak, and insects hum through the night. The chorus ceases when the lorry rumbles to start its day of toil, and the rooster jumps onto the rusty wire fence and crows, and crows, and crows.

The midday heat ushers everyone indoors, into the safety of shade—the day hits the pause button for a brief intermission.

Every afternoon, rain pours from voluminous clouds crashing into the surrounding hills, like a velvet curtain falling after a show.

The rain stops as suddenly as it comes. Heat turns to steam. The scent of earth and asphalt rises. The raintown exhaled.

Our town was dug out of the tin ore rush in the 1850s, as droves of Chinese poured in, chasing promises of wealth and fortune—our grandfathers amongst them. The culmination of this frenzy was the infamous Ghee Hin and Hai San feud during the Larut wars. The British saw the opening, marched in under the guise of restoring peace, and planted their Union Jack on the tin mines instead.

They named it Taiping (太平)—Great Peace. Whether in irony or hope, we never knew.

A century later, once the ore had all been mined and traded, and the town had passed its peak prosperity, the miners moved south to Ipoh’s new mines or died of old age, leaving behind vast dugout pits. Nature reclaimed them with water, dissolving all traces of greed, transforming them into lakes.

Now, rain trees bow over as if clawing their way to the water. Lotus flowers bloom during the drier part of the year on ponds like a pink blanket. Lush trees flank the meandering paths.

White egrets, once only passing through, now settle in this paradise, occasionally fluttering their wings and startling the stillness with an occasional squawk.

The water is still and calm, so still that if you stand on one of its Chinese-inspired bridges, you’ll see red, white, and orange koi swimming in it, oversized from the generous feeding from visitors.

Peace reigns in this place, known to us as Lake Garden, quietly fulfilling the town’s name.

Walk down any of its roads and you will reach the heart of the town, where gridded rows of colonial shophouses blend Chinese and British architecture.

High shuttered windows adorn narrow double-storey shops, wedged so close they’ll collapse without one another. The rows of shops, with darkened masonry walls and crumbling tiled roofs, were sliced off at both ends like a block of bread.

The clock tower, whose bell never tolled, stands at the center—a sentry still keeping watch long after the hands that raised it had gone.

We are the forgotten town that helped build northern Peninsular Malaysia into the modern, thriving land it is today.

We had the first train station in the country, but hardly anyone disembarks here, not on their journey between the cities—Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh, and Penang. Having been mined to emptiness before its neighbors, the British left for good before it ever had the chance to be declared a city.

Still, we pay taxes on every sen earned to stand in the disappearing valley of a town that becomes the ghost of our success.

Our lawns are tiled for convenience, sometimes with a patch of grass we call a garden, but nothing ever grows, and nobody ever lingers.

Every house has a Proton or a Perodua, sometimes a Toyota or a Honda—one parked on the porch, another out on the curb by the gate. Beside it stands a metal contraption cradling an oversized plastic tong stuffed with garbage.

Once a week, the lori sampah clatters by and empties them with a sharp clang, leaving behind a sour decay that lingers for hours until the rain washes it away, and the children come out to play, between rows of slim, high-ceilinged houses. Hot air escapes through its open slatted vents above, like a thief in the night.

It’s a town where teenagers, having nowhere to go on Friday nights, ride their motorbikes to the memorial cemetery, a graveyard of stones for Allied soldiers from a war no one remembers, among strangers who no longer know them, and will never know them.

In this dark soulless place they idle, smoke some, and talk over one another in multiple dialects, blasting “Iris” or “Hoi Fut Tin Hung”, depending on their schools—the Chinese or the British1, until they look down one night and realize they’re thirty-something and have been plucked and planted in the megacity three hours south, still in a daze, wondering where the empty streets and unpeopled spaces have gone.

It’s where the older folks meet daily for kopi-o or cham-peng at the kopitiam with friends they’ve grown old with, each time quietly wondering who won’t be coming ever again, before sitting together in a row on red plastic chairs outside gold shops that never seem to sell a thing, along Jalan Taming Sari—the main road—to stare at the sky and bet on the exact moment the first drop of rain touches the ground.

It’s where those between the young and the old are not seen, because they are in the megacity earning money while their aging parents care for their carefree children.

And each morning, when the heavy fog finally settles, forgotten laundry hanging outside now wetter than it was the night before, the elderly amble to the morning market, while the school buses shuttle the children from home to schools dictated by the past.

And as the days pile into years, you’d cook and clean, the children would learn and play, until they, too, are gone, just as you were about to leave this world. Then your children would slowly return to sit in your empty rattan rocking chair, reveling in their childhood peace until their children send theirs back.

The cycle renews itself. That town.

And that town is ever there in the valley, a midwife and a keeper, ever receiving, ever raining.

It is where we came from. It is where we left. It is where we shall return.

I’d love to hear from you: what place holds your memories, your leaving, and possibly your return?

And if you enjoyed this kind of immersive personal essay that explores the intersection of memory and how it shapes our present, consider—

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Let’s explore the lightness of life.

The joy of lightness.
The beauty of lightness.
The fun of lightness.
The delight of lightness.

Why live and strive for meaning when it is all so fleeting and never to return? Or should we live because of it? - For a brief moment of lightness, I became heavy

Let’s enjoy the lightness of life because it is ephemeral and non-recurring.

Every single moment, significant or not, is just as precious. Every one of them happens only once and will never return.

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There are many small joys and lightness in our daily lives.

Eating ice cream by the little canal with my son, our feet cooling in the running water.
Packing the whole family into the car to drive off to a spontaneous trip somewhere.
The warmth of the sunlight trickling through the canopy of trees while hiking with my child.

Light itself — a word coincidentally homonymous with the feeling of lightness — brings me to the Japanese word komorebi.

The film “Perfect Days”—which inspires this practice— uses komorebi to show how we can find beauty and meaning in everyday life, even in the seemingly mundane.

We can extend komorebi—the way light filters through trees — to other places, too, if we’re paying attention.

This is what we are going to do

We are going to look out for komorebi and the other ways light is present in our lives.

When indoors, marvel at how the light slips in through the curtains and openings. How light dances on tiles, mirrors, and walls.

Outdoor in nature, marvel at how light breaks through the trees on the sidewalk, in the park, or the canopy of leaves in a forest. How light reflects off running rivers or calm lakes.

In the urban space, marvel at how light weaves through human constructs—buildings, poles, shadows, corners.

Notice the light's color, its ever-changing texture, its movement, and its lightness.

Let the noise fade into the background as the light envelops you.

For those who want to do more

Try noticing other kinds of lightness in your life—not just what you see, but also through all your other senses.

The first taste of coffee in the morning.
The gentle breeze on your face.
The ringing laughter of a child.
The soft touch of a well-placed hand.

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What lightness of life have you noticed and delighted in?

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Companion post:

Sakura always reminds me to pause—to be awed by the quiet beauty of life. And in that same breath, it clutches my heart, whispering the futility of holding on to any of it. - my Note

It embodies the beauty of life and the sense that it is all worth it—the slow, patient growth from seed to tree, the wait in dormancy all year, and the brief moment of glory before shedding all its petals like gossamer in the wind1.

The Sakura tree and its glorious yet fleeting bloom embody both lightness and heaviness.

This reminded me of Kundera's novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being. During one of our long conversations about the meaning of life, a friend in the Philippines implored me to read it. With the urgency of an impending assignment, I sought out the book immediately and consumed it.

The novel was my first foray into the world of philosophical fiction. I absorbed many ideas and terms—kitsch, the eternal return, vertigo—but the message that got me most was: Why live and strive for meaning when it is all so fleeting and never to return? Or should we live because of it?

Lightness, like the Sakura bloom, brings us beauty, sweetness, and all the pleasures in life.

Heaviness is the tree itself, ever connected to its roots, standing tall after so many years of slow growth and waiting patiently for its yearly bloom.

I value freedom. As Kundera explored in his novel, it represents lightness—freedom from society’s expectations, rules, laws, and systems. But it is also physical—a freedom not rooted to a place or attached to a person, transcending space and perhaps time without limits.

Then again, I also value love and connection, which represent heaviness.

Can one have a connection with oneself and others while maintaining one's freedom?

To an extent, possibly.

I am now bound by my obligations as a mother and wife, but the freedom to choose remains. Or not? Can I drop everything now and go for a one-month backpacking trip somewhere alone?

In theory, I can, but the consequences are significant. A mom’s guilt cannot be underestimated. So no, not really. I have tethered myself—consciously—by love.

As Kundera asked, “Muss es sein?” (Must it be?) In my freedom, I once felt light. But now, tethered by love, I answer, “Es muss sein” (It must be).

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When I traveled alone, I was truly happy with the freedom, the lightness of life, akin to Sabina in the novel, who embraced freedom as a rebellion—a refusal to be fixed in a place or defined by others' expectations. And like her, I, too, found liberation in anonymity, adventure, exploration, and brief but vivid connections with strangers.

I forged real connections with some travelers on the road. At the same time, I learned to bid them farewell and wish them a good life when it was time to part, shedding attachment but holding on to our shared memories as an everlasting imprint.

Even though all things in life are transitory in the cosmic view, some are lighter and some are heavier. Some are light, like a chance encounter on the road. Others are heavy, like a lifetime with biological family, lifelong friends, a partner, or children.

Light in time does not mean light in meaning. A deep connection formed by chance may leave a more lasting imprint than a fragile bond that spans a lifetime.

Those travelers I connected with changed me subtly, in ways I don't always realize, and I, too, may have changed them in ways I'll never know. I carry a part of them with me, no matter how small. And they, too, carry me now all over the world. And with time, by the virtue of compounding, the impact would not have been insignificant.

With our life partners and children, our impact on them is markedly more profound, and no doubt more apparent.

The voices of my ancestors echoed through the core beliefs I hold. As much as I try to sift through them, choosing what to pass on and what to leave behind, I know I will inevitably take part in shaping the core beliefs my children will come to carry.

And like those ancestral whispers, my mark will outlive me, perhaps altered, perhaps faint—carried on through generations by bloodlines and connections.

This is where heaviness comes in. Our lives can be heavy despite their lightness.

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Conscious living seems light at first glance. Being mindful of every moment seems light, as we all know how quickly the moment passes.

Being conscious is about living in the now. The past has gone, and the future has yet to come.

Our human nature of holding on to the past and looking to the future is our attempt to make our light, fragile life heavy.

But if we live only in the now, doesn't that make the now eternal? Instead of living in the past or the future, we are always in the now that will ever be.

And what is that if not heavy?

We can live consciously in lightness by appreciating every transitory beauty—a chance encounter, a Sakura in bloom, a journey without destination, a quiet rebellion against systems, dogmas, and social chains.

But we can also live consciously in heaviness by valuing genuine connections, practicing compassion, and spreading genuine love, knowing that all the impressions we leave behind may last long after we are gone.

Even the most ancient trees are transitory, yet they represent heaviness. Touching a few thousand-year-old cedar tree in Yakushima, Japan, as the four-day rain relentlessly poured on us, I communed with humanity’s distant ancestors from millennia ago.

For a brief moment of lightness, I became heavy.

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It's been a long time since I wrote a letter. How have you been? How is life living consciously?

It had been a while since we returned from Malaysia—yet somehow, it felt like yesterday too.

How does time flow? It dilates and contracts, depending on the state of the person who experienced it.

I once did bungee jumping in New Zealand at the world’s first commercial bungee operation at Kawarau Bridge.

I stood at the bridge's ledge—the wind cut through me as I stared ahead into the horizon. A tug at my straps pulled my attention back. A lady was busy securing the bungee straps on me. My eyes darted back quickly to survey the area, my feet cold and my body stiff.

“Ok, ready?” she called loudly over the roaring wind. I stepped back, blinking rapidly as I made eye contact with her.

“Really? Is it safe?” I asked1. She nodded firmly and gave me a tug at the strap between my shoulder blades, gently nudging me to go.

My leg bent without me bending it, and I jumped off the bridge without me jumping off.

Then I froze mid-air, arms spread out beside me. My eyes widened, taking in the clear blue sky, the rushing crystal blue river meandering through the green valley flanked by mountains. My body hung there, weightless, long enough to enjoy it all.

My view slowly changed to face the river. I noticed an orange raft with people waiting for my imminent arrival. I screamed at the top of my lungs as I plunged face-first into the rapid currents.

Then the rope went taut, breaking my fall. I swung a few times like a pendulum, with blurs of blue and green. I released the tension and let my body hang loose until the people on the boat pulled me in.

Later, I would view my jump again from a recorded video. In the footage, I jumped, screamed instantly as I plunged, and then swung like a ragdoll—barely eight seconds from start to finish.

Time dilated for me as I faced an existential threat and a significant moment of awe. It felt like minutes when it was only seconds. I even had the time to tell myself to enjoy the view.

For the past eight weeks, I have experienced both time dilation and the usual speeding of time.

When we live mindfully, time dilates, too. Sitting in the half-lotus position, concentrating on your breath and nothing else, ten minutes of meditation may feel like a long time.

Hopefully, with the training behind me, I can return to my regular rhythm here and experience my usual time progression.

Thank you for your patience, and as always, I appreciate you taking the time to read.

Consciously yours, Rachel

For conscious living

Emotions are data

I first heard the phrase “emotions are data” at the kickoff of my leadership training. It immediately resonated with many of us. Then yesterday, I came across the exact phrase again—this time in a podcast episode by Dr. Laurie Santos (The Happiness Podcast) featuring Susan David.

Key takeaways from the podcast:

1. Emotions are data; so listen to them.

2. Name your emotions accurately. Instead of generic “I am stressed”, be specific—are you overwhelmed, disappointed, or frustrated? The more specific you are, the more accurate your emotional data becomes.

3. Create distance from your emotions. Rather than saying “I am disappointed”, say “I notice that I’m feeling disappointed”. Then ask: What is this feeling telling me? What should I do with this information?

Once again, this quote from Viktor Frankl is mentioned—“Between stimulus and response lies a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose a response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness.”

Then the next morning, I woke up to the Marginalian newsletter on Viktor Frankl talking about the choices we can make internally.

Is this synchronicity? It feels like the universe is gently repeating this message from different directions. It's time I embrace that elusive space between emotion and reaction.

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Using AI

There’s been a lot of buzz lately about using AI in writing. asked us in a thread how we used it, and then I came across ’s advice to create a personal AI policy. There were also various takes on AI around the Substackverse, and I am intrigued to see how people use and view AI.

I use AI daily, mostly like a personal assistant: researching, tracking fitness and nutrition, translating text, and sometimes as a brainstorming partner or sounding board. When it comes to writing, I use AI mostly as a proofreader. I ask it to check for flow, redundancies, and mistakes, but I specifically request not to change anything. I don’t have a hard stance on AI in writing, but I agree that nothing beats human creativity, at least not yet. So I always start by creating on my own, and only bring AI in afterward to support the refinement process.

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For sharing

Make something heavy by

I have been thinking about lightness versus heaviness lately, which I’ll post about next. This article spoke about heaviness from a different perspective. Anu described the internet as light, with value often placed on short messages and fleeting images. On Substack, the lightest part is Notes. She said many light things don’t add to heavy things, and we all, in essence, crave to create something heavy. For example, instead of continuing to post content endlessly, we yearn to write a book, a masterpiece.

In case you’ve missed my essays in the past two months

It was something I had always known but never truly acknowledged. It lived in the background, quietly shaping my choices, until I finally realized what it was.

It was the gap between my version of who I thought I was and reality.

Now that I know this, I can catch those moments when my autopilot takes over, when my core belief activates without me even noticing. And in those moments, I have the power to pause, to step back into conscious living, to choose my response—and therefore, the outcome.

“Between stimulus and response lies a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose a response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness.” - Viktor Frankl

Catching it is easier once you know it’s there. Choosing differently is harder. The old patterns—the childhood routines—feel comfortable. They offer certainty.

But between your old belief and its opposite lies a space. A space where freedom lives. A space where you can choose to walk a different path.

At first, forging that new path feels like hacking through a jungle—uncertain, uncomfortable, full of unknowns.

It’s hard to forge new paths. But it’s not impossible. And it can be freeing. And it’s worth it.

Here's what we are going to do

Before we begin, I encourage you to read my essay on core beliefs first. It shares the background on how core beliefs are formed, how they shape us, why uncovering them is essential, and my personal experience with it.

We’ll try to identify our core beliefs. Sometimes they surface easily; other times, it takes a bit of patience.

Either way, give yourself time and be kind to yourself. Every experience is different. These guiding questions can help you reconnect with your younger self.

⚡ Important: Revisiting childhood memories can be a triggering experience. If you’re not ready, you may want to skip this practice.

A few questions to ask yourself

As a child:

• What were you praised for?

• What were you reprimanded for?

• What expectations did you connect those experiences to?

• What strategies to react to those expectations?

• What strategies are you still using today?

Whatever you find, meet it with compassion. Greet your core beliefs as an old friend. They have, after all, brought you to where you are today.

For those who want to go further

We shall work further with the core beliefs that we have unearthed and learn how to manage them.

Ask yourself:

• What core beliefs still serve me today?

• Which ones push me forward—or pressure me?

• Which ones limit me?

• Which ones create a sense that I—or others—am not enough?

Then, choose one limiting core belief to work on first. We will determine its opposite to create new possibilities for action.

“When you write it or speak it out, it should make you squirm. And if you're lucky, you might stumble upon a Sehnsucht feeling—a longing for something that gives you angst, but you kind of wish you had it or even wanted it.” - The parts of me I did not choose.

Ask yourself:

• How can I formulate an opposite belief that pulls me in a completely different direction?

• What words does this new belief need to have a lasting impact on me?

• How does this opposite belief feel? Does it stir something in me, or do I need to intensify it further?

Finally, visualize yourself with the opposite. That’s it. Just let it do its magic.

What I did with the practice

When I worked through this practice myself, I uncovered a core belief I shared—I am strong and must protect my freedom at all costs.

It was limiting for me because I find it difficult to ask for help or be vulnerable, and I'm also hesitant to commit myself to anything that may restrict my freedom.

Working with its opposite not only scares me, but it also uncovers a Sehsucht in me—the longing to not be in control, to just be, and to let others help me.

Share with us

If you’ve uncovered a core belief—especially a limiting one—feel free to share it.

And if you’ve explored its opposite, I’d love to hear what effect that had on you, too.

Leave a comment

                                                                     1.

We think we know ourselves, but we don’t. Not really. The irony is—we’re the only ones who can. This is how lonely a human life can be.

So we must try to understand ourselves more deeply—because if we don’t, no one else stands a chance of truly knowing us.

“Go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows” - Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet.

Perhaps this is one of our life’s main tasks.

                                                                     2.

Why does my body freeze when I hear my children cry and scream?

I was reprimanded for crying as a child. It was seen as a weakness, as something that made others uncomfortable. So I became the strong one—the one who doesn’t cry, not even in grief.

These reactions aren’t just habits. They are echoes of our earliest lessons absorbed long before we had words for them. What began as a way to stay safe and be loved becomes something deeper: a core belief. In psychology, core beliefs are the unconscious truths we adopt about ourselves, others, and the world.

That’s why I struggle with what success means.

That’s why I feel the need to be right and to be heard.

That’s why I fiercely protect my agency and autonomy.

That is why I am eternally seeking that elusive freedom.

                                                                     3.

Life seems to move in a straight-line story plot like mine—from childhood to working adulthood, then I broke free to travel the world with my trusty backpack, met the love of my life, and now spend most of my time nurturing two young ones.

But it is more like an eternal loop from what we were to what we are now. Subconsciously, we are constantly pulled back to where we came from, regardless of how far we have grown or believe we have changed.

We are like branches, ever reaching for the sun and stretching far and beyond, yet ultimately, we are still connected to the trunk and the roots where we all started. And those earliest roots? They’re often the strongest.

                                                                     4.

Some scientists believe that our core beliefs are set and unchangeable once formed. This has since been debunked. Thanks to neuroscience and studies in neuroplasticity, we now know that the brain can change throughout life, including patterns, habits, and core beliefs.

Changing deeply rooted core beliefs is more challenging, but it is still possible with conscious effort.

I have seen myself transformed. When I was young, money was scarce and the source of many of our problems, causing the formation of a core belief—money is the answer to everything, the source of happiness. Spoiler alert: It is not.

Luckily, I learned this early on when I started earning more than I could spend during my career as an independent tech consultant. My bank account grew, but nothing else changed. I still lived simply, still found joy in small things.

Watching one of my core beliefs fall apart under the spotlight was unsettling.

But I won’t sugarcoat this: money is essential—to a point. Without it, the weight of survival overshadows everything else. I’m not speaking of abundance, but of the dignity that comes with self-sufficiency.

                                                                     5.

I’ve spent a good part of my life trying to understand myself.

A decade ago, during a season of soul-searching, I dove into philosophy, personality theories, and late-night journaling, asking the big question: Who am I, really?

That was when I discovered the MBTI and true to type, I became mildly obsessed. As an INTP—often called “The Thinker”—I analyzed myself and everyone around me. I tried other personality tests too, always curious to find new perspectives on who I am.

And yet, even after all these tests and going down countless rabbit holes, I still find parts of me that I’ve never noticed before.

In a recent leadership training, we began by looking inward—back to where it all began. Despite having exercised my self-reflection muscles, it was still hard.

Each time we trace a root, we see how deep it runs—and how it has shaped the trunk and the branches above.

It is when we recognize one of the core beliefs we’ve unknowingly carried all this time, we reclaim the power to choose how to use it.

                                                                     6.

One of my core beliefs is that I am strong and must protect my freedom at all costs.

When I was an infant, I was given to a nanny at just two months old. While I was still adjusting to a new caregiver, I was passed on again—this time to my Lai Ma, who thankfully took me under her wing until I was five. After that, I was once again removed from my primary caregiver and had to adapt to a new environment with my biological family.

These events shaped me into who I am—an independent person who fiercely protects her agency and freedom.

This belief buoyed me as I moved abroad, learned a new language, and created a new life here while navigating motherhood far away from my family and closest friends.

I pushed through not speaking the language at first, on multiple rejections and mounting bureaucracy, getting only a cold meal of bread and cheese after 20 hours of labor and endless nights with a crying baby.

“If you want to survive in this world, you gotta do it yourself,” said the little me, hugging her comfort pillow tight while curled up under the blanket.

This core belief, though, has many limiting qualities. I find it extremely difficult to ask for help, and I find it challenging to commit to things that would threaten my sovereignty and freedom.

Two years ago, after being sick for more than four weeks, having woken up from a fitful sleep on a Saturday did I crawl out to my husband asking him to get his sister to help. That took all of me to say I needed to rest and recuperate.

                                                                     7.

One exercise in the same training is to find the opposite of your core belief. When you write it or speak it out, it should make you squirm. And if you're lucky, you might stumble upon a Sehnsucht feeling—a longing for something that gives you angst, but you kind of wish you had it or even wanted it.

It is like a path in a beautiful, mysterious forest you never took but often dreamt about.

All my life, I’ve equated freedom with safety. But Sehnsucht showed me another kind—the longing to be lost, to belong without needing to fight to keep it.

I experienced all that during my traveling days, letting go of control and exploring the unknown, including not needing to achieve anything and just being. That said, I still clung to one thing—my freedom. I kept my passport close, tucked in a travel waist pack like it was the most valuable thing on earth.

                                                                     8.

I see now why motherhood is a contradiction to me.

Being a mother requires humility. It requires admitting that you cannot do it alone, not if you want to do it well without breaking.

Being a mother means losing a certain amount of freedom. You are tethered now. Life is no longer just your own.

Being a mother requires letting go of a certain amount of carefreeness. But it also requires relinquishing control.

“They (your children) come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you” - Khalil Gibran, On Children.

                                                                     9.

We may not be able to pull out our roots—doing so might topple the tree.

But we can learn to live with them, recognize when they serve or limit us, and choose our reactions accordingly.

It is about leaving the well-trodden path when needed and forging a new one through the beautiful, mysterious forest. It won't be easy, but it will be worth it.

This is the lifelong work of becoming. This is the way of conscious living.

Ironically, Carl Jung, who inspired MBTI, a tool that neatly fits everyone into boxes, deeply believed in transcendence and transformation—the journey beyond labels and towards discovering one's whole self.

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” - Carl Jung in Memories, Dreams, Reflections.

And hopefully, one day, we’ll see the tree flourish—still rooted, but branching into the whole self.

If you're interested in the methods on how to determine your core beliefs, reflect on how they have brought you to where you are and how they are now still serving or limiting you today, and how to walk the uncharted path through your own beautiful, mysterious forest, look out for next week’s Conscious Living Practice 🙂

What core belief have you embraced—and is it still serving you?

Leave a comment

This was my very first post when I started this newsletter with exactly two readers—my partner and my best friend, whom I added myself. Now that we have some new readers here (thank you for subscribing!), I’d love to share it again. I’m still in search of awe myself, and I invite you to join me.

When we were young, life was a constant wonder, and filled with awe through the discovery of many new things about the world in our immediate environment. As we grew older, the sense of wonder diminished, and so did our experience of awe.

In my early twenties, I didn't realize I had been missing the experience of awe for a long time. My focus was solely on completing my undergraduate studies and finding immediate employment, influenced by my Chinese-Malaysian upbringing.

While navigating the rat race, contemplating climbing the career ladder, deciding against it, and becoming an independent contractor, I lost touch with awe. I was also in an unhappy relationship that did not align with my true self then, and I myself had almost forgotten who I was.

Then, an opportunity presented itself - a three-month contract work in the Philippines - just what I needed. I was plucked out of my “bubble” and plunged into the unknown, which, in retrospect, was not much of the unknown. It was, in fact, my desired way of life. It was how I would have wanted to live.

During my short stint in the Philippines, I lived a life filled with awe. The kindness and openness of the Filipinos, the untouched beauty of the sea and islands, obtaining my first diving certification, snorkeling endlessly under the sun, and sitting at the front of a sailing boat witnessing the sunset—all contributed to my encounters with awe.

These encounters with the sublime have awakened me and made me question my own paradigm, reflecting on how I have been living and perceiving the world through a narrow lens. I have come to realize how little I truly know and how limited my experiences have been.

I remember I was barely there for a week when I learned that my colleagues were going to swim with the whale sharks in Donsol the following weekend. I was momentarily discouraged that I had missed the opportunity, but no, Thessa, my first friend and colleague, invited me; in fact, she persuaded me to join them.

It didn't matter that there wasn't enough room for all of us to sleep, even without me, nor how we managed to add another person to the logistics. In the end, we made it, and I found myself swimming next to a giant whale shark, so large I dare not describe the size lest I have inflated it in my memory. The experience was an awe so profound that I found it difficult to put into words.

From this experience, I learned from the Filipinos that by caring for one another, we can overcome any obstacle and collectively embrace moments of awe, leading to deep and meaningful connections.

So what is awe or the sublime?

Awe is the feeling of something vast that transcends our understanding of the world, and a need for accommodation (meaning to how we make sense of and adjust to what we experience) - Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt.

When I experience awe, my consciousness will be summoned into the moment, and I will experience everything in its heightened sense, and my contemplation of it will go into an overdrive. Then, there will be an overwhelming feeling coming from the center of my body, the feeling that I am not alone in this world, that I am small and the universe is large, and that somehow, even then, I don’t feel alone because we are all connected.

It is one of the most profound experiences one can have. It is the moment when we can briefly commune with the universe and return to the beginning or glimpse at the end of life.

What about the sublime? When I think of the sublime, I think of those moments of awe when I am struck by the beauty of nature, the wonders of the world, or the immensity of time.

Like the first time, I sat on a peak in the desert, staring into the horizon surrounded by golden sands in every direction. Or the time when I was lying alone in my sleeping bag somewhere atop the Drakensberg, staring up into the starry sky with the Milky Way stretching across it like a rainbow. It was also the time when I placed my palm upon a few-thousand-years-old cedar tree in Yakushima, sensing the span of time beyond any human life, communicating with those who had come before me seeking solace with this very same tree.

“The feeling of the sublime is at once a feeling of displeasure, arising from the inadequacy of imagination in the aesthetic estimation of magnitude to attain to its estimation of reason, and a simultaneous awakened pleasure, arising from this very judgment of the inadequacy of sense of being in accord with ideas of reason, so far as the effort to attain to these is for us a law.” - Kant

In essence, the feeling of the sublime involves a tension between our senses' inadequacy and our reason's capacity to comprehend the infinite or the immense. This tension leads to the so-called need for accommodation - we must redefine our thinking or realign how we live to accommodate this awakening.

The word for awe in German, “Ehrfurcht,” combines the notions of reverence (Verehrung) and fear (Furcht), encapsulating this profound feeling beautifully. There is this reverence for the sublime combined with a sense of fear, acknowledging that it surpasses our limited understanding.

Why do we need awe?

Brief experiences of awe will redefine the self in terms of the collective and orient our actions towards the interest of others or something other than the self. One cannot stare into the Milky Way and not feel that there is more than oneself. 

These brief encounters with the sublime have the power to spark wonder and curiosity within us. They serve as a reminder to maintain an open mind, welcome new experiences, and nurture lifelong learning.

The need for accommodation following encounters with awe or the sublime will help to shape us into a better person. It compels us to shed prejudices, expand our minds, and perceive things beyond our initial assumptions. It calls us toquestion our prejudgments and societal conditioning. Through this ongoing process of reflection and reevaluation, we continue to redefine ourselves to become our best selves.

Most importantly, I find that it is one of the catalysts to conscious living. The experience of awe brings us back to the present moment, calling our conscious mind into active engagement. It makes us aware of the here and now. The need for accommodation will further strengthen our conscious mind as it contemplates its place in the universe. 

Travel for awe

Traveling provides a fertile ground for encountering awe-inspiring moments. It takes us out of our comfort zones and familiar territories, immersing us in different systems and people whose lives and cultures often seem foreign to us. Yet, during close encounters with these people along the way, I have not only discovered our similarities, I was also met with consistent acts of kindness.

These awe-inspiring experiences have repeatedly reshaped my perspectives, leading me to firmly believe that at the core of humanity lies goodness. They have left me with a profound sense of connection to humankind and the world at large, transcending borders and cultures, languages, religions, and whatever that divides us.

In our travels, we often seek out the renowned wonders of the world, such as the so-called tourist attractions, but we also explore the unknown and the untrodden paths. Whether it’s marveling at the iconic pyramids in Egypt or discovering an obscure temple near Kampong Cham in Cambodia, both have the power to evoke awe.

How to find awe in everyday life

But not all of us can travel all the time, and not everyone desires to do so, although I personally wish I could. Fortunately, we can still find awe in our everyday lives as well.

There are many ways we can find awe in everyday life; one that is recommended by Dr. Kletner himself is to take an awe walk. This practice involves being mindful, taking deep breaths, removing distractions such as phones, and consciously attuning yourself to your surroundings.

By adopting this approach, one can actively seek out things that inspire awe, be it in a natural or urban environment. The key is to cultivate awareness and openness to the awe-inspiring moments that can be found anywhere.

Here are some more ideas or ways to find awe in our everyday life:

Take advantage of collective awe. Attend a concert of your favorite artist and join the collective joy with fellow fans. Alternatively, go to a congregation that resonates with your values and commune with like-minded people.

Look for a dark park or any spot away from urban light pollution, and enjoy some stargazing. Bring along a comfortable picnic mat and invite your loved ones to join you in contemplating the vastness of the universe.

Search for opportunities to witness sunrises or sunsets. You can embark on a rewarding hike to a peak and savor the view, or simply enjoy them from the comfort of your own home, gazing out of a window or balcony. When did you last enjoy a well-earned sunrise or relax after a long day with a mesmerizing sunset?

Look up the oldest tree in your area. Find it, touch it, and contemplate the countless individuals who have come and gone before you, as well as those who will follow, all connecting with this same ancient tree.

Do share the last time you experienced awe or if any of the above brings you to it!

If you have not read this:

When I started solo backpacking, it was as much a journey outward into the world as it was inward into myself. I was often hyper-aware as I explored new terrains, observed different cultures, tasted new foods, and immersed myself in novel experiences at alarming speed and quantity. In moments of awe, I would feel a subtle shift within me—thousands of thoughts rushing through my mind, rewiring who I was. When night fell, I retreated into the hostels, often just reading or writing in a corner of a lobby, especially if it was one of those with good relaxing vibes. Sometimes I may feel especially extroverted and talk to fellow backpackers for tips and maybe even join up for the next day's adventure. But more often than not, I retreated inward, and pondered about life.

Alone out there, with just me against the world, it is almost impossible not to raise some self-awareness.

But that was just the surface of self-awareness. Motherhood, however, was the real awakening. Giving birth to another life and having them tethered to you as if you are their entire world brings up profound existential questions. And there’s nothing like a toddler or a young child, to bring out all your childhood memories and traumas, surprising yourself at how little it takes to trigger you, to push your buttons and to bring in floods of emotions you have long stored away in the deepest recesses of your mind.

This leadership training has humbled me again as someone who once thought she knew herself well and what she stood for. It has shown me that learning about oneself is a lifelong journey—a never-ending process of undoing and remaking. And it can be one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself.

Here’s what we are going to do

For the next two weeks, we will introduce small moments of self-awareness into our daily lives. We will observe ourselves—only to observe, recognize it as it is, acknowledge it, and then let it go. This activity is inspired by Thich Nhat Hanh’s The Miracle of Mindfulness.

For example, when a feeling of sadness arises, immediately recognize it: “A feeling of sadness has just arisen in me.” If it continues, acknowledge it. If there are no feelings, recognize that there aren't any. If you notice tension in your shoulders or neck, acknowledge it: “I feel tension in my shoulders and neck.” If possible, allow yourself to release and relax those areas.

Each day, set aside 5 minutes to check in with yourself:

• Observe how you feel emotionally.

• Do a quick body scan—notice any tension, relaxation, or discomfort.

• Acknowledge them and then let go.

After two weeks, take a moment to reflect:

• What have I learned about myself?

• Which emotions or sensations showed up most often?

• What surprised me the most during this practice?

For those who want to go deeper

In addition to the above, you can also incorporate these practices:

• When you feel triggered or stimulated, pause. Take note of what is happening within you and acknowledge it. Permit yourself to stay in the space between the trigger and your response. Sometimes, choosing not to respond could be the best response.

  “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” - Victor Frankl.

• Refine your emotional awareness. Instead of broad labels like ‘stressed’ or ‘happy,’ try to pinpoint your feelings: Is it frustration or disappointment? Excitement or contentment? The more precise you are, the better you can understand yourself.

Ask yourself these, too, at the end of two weeks:

• How did I respond to my emotions and sensations?

• What new awareness have I gained about myself?

• How can I continue using the space between stimulus and response?

Share with us

I’d love to hear about your practice of self-observation in your daily life. Let’s inspire each other!

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As I mentioned in my previous letter, I have been back in my hometown celebrating Chinese New Year for the past few weeks. Though we’ve returned for a while, I’m still trying to pick up where I left off while juggling all the new things life is throwing my way. I hope to get back to my regular posting here soon—thanks for sticking around!

As a child, the highlight of Chinese New Year1 was receiving hong bao—red packets filled with money. We accepted them with grace, bowing slightly, hands clasped in the traditional greeting as we said, ‘Gung Hei Faat Coi!’—wishing you prosperity. Keeping a straight face, we tucked the packets away, showing neither excitement nor curiosity. But the moment we got home, we dashed to our rooms, eager to count our bounties in secret.

Growing up as a minority Chinese in Malaysia, Chinese New Year was more than just a festival—it was a symbol of my heritage. Each year, as February approached, preparations began in earnest for the celebration. Somehow, it never felt like the year had truly begun until we ushered in the Chinese New Year.

And, as with every celebration in our community, food was always at the heart of it.

I won't forget the scent of mandarin oranges lingering on my fingers after peeling yet another piece to eat. I kept the best of the peels for Ah Ma, my paternal grandmother, to dry on a large rattan dulang for weeks after under the hot Malaysian tropical sun.

Nor the sweet aroma of Ah Ma’s adzuki bean soup, boiled for hours with her self-dried mandarin peels, greeting me on Chor Yat, the first day of the new year. This was always followed by her fragrant fried Mee Hoon, generously packed with large prawns she peeled with care.

Nor the waft of oily richness rising from the dark, murky duck soup simmering in a deep stainless steel pot at my maternal grandmother Po Po’s house during Chor Yat lunch. The clang of a metal spatula against the cast iron wok echoed as my Po Po whipped up the loh hon chai, serving it last on a table already brimming with prosperous dishes.

I won't forget the fragrant buttery cookies melting in my mouth as I pop in yet another irresistible one. Only to regret later when I was presented with feasts during mealtime and found myself not hungry.

Nor the smoky, oily barbecue meat slices, long yok, sticking to my tongue and hands all greasy and sticky.

I won't forget the assault of flavors as we were served a roulette of gigantic plates of food during the Chinese reunion feast, specially prepared for the occasion: prosperity platter, steamed whole fish, giant prawns, roasted suckling pig, vegetables yam basket, and roasted whole chicken.

But Chinese New Year was more than just about food. It was about traditions—the customs that held us together, passed down through generations, shaping the way we celebrated.

In Malaysia, most Chinese families trace their roots to the southern region, and some customs from those areas are still observed today. However, many traditions have faded in my family—partly because my grandparents didn’t actively pass them down and partly because my parents didn’t continue them.

I won't forget the new dress collar scratching my neck and the sides pinching my ribs. The tropical sun offered no relief as we shuffled from house to house in stiff new clothes for pai nin—the customary New Year’s visit to family and friends.

Nor the gleeful anticipation of receiving hong baos mixed with the anxiety of facing 30 relatives, some of whom I saw only once a year, as they gathered at my Ah Ma’s house next door. The pressure was even greater because I had to address each elder by their proper title, based on rank, paternal or maternal side, blood relation, or marriage.

I won't forget the customary pai nin at Lai Ma and Lai Pa’s house. Sometimes, my god-siblings’ visit coincided with ours, filling the airy large home with laughter and excited chatter. In later years, my Lai Ma ushered me to her home-cooked celebration food-laden table in the solace of missing those of my grandmothers.

Nor the visits to one house after another on Chor Sam, the third day, with my friends. During my teenage years, my friends and I gathered enough older friends to chauffeur us around, fitting up to seven of us in four-seater sedan cars to pai nin each of our houses. Our parents waited expectantly at home for us girls to arrive to eat snacks, gamble, chit-chat, and, of course, receive hong bao from them.

At the same time, no celebrations will go by without some indulgent yet fun communal activities. Adrenaline, laughter, and raucousness filled my memories, too.

I won't forget the evenings that stretched on forever, with Formica tables unfolding in living rooms, adults surrounding them, happily rowdy and gambling with playing cards. Soon, the kids formed a circle on the floor to mimic them. Once I was old enough to join, my daddy offered me money to play: “If you win, it's yours; if you lose, it's mine.” I sulked like mad when I lost, nevertheless.

Nor the sound and light of firecrackers filling the neighborhood with mesmerizing fire sparklers in my hands. My older cousins threw Pop Pop, crackers the size of peas that popped loudly on impact, at us, the younger ones. I also watched them light bigger firecrackers that flew across the road or burst into flames with a bang.

But like all things in life, change is inevitable. As years passed, the people who visited dwindled, and the celebration muted.

Once Ah Ma left this world, the magnet that held us together was gone. A few relatives still came over out of habit, but after a few years, it too stopped. Then, my Po Po joined her, marking the end of my maternal side coming together.

My generation was not spared from disappearing, but in different ways. Some no longer return because their families have moved to the big city. Some return only every other year as they alternate with their spouses' homes. And some, like me, have moved far away.

This year, I returned with my family to celebrate this significant occasion—the first time for my children. I would be lying if I said I was giving them the same experience I had when I was young, but at least a few things remain.

Hong baos were still given out. We still had a reunion dinner with the relatives from my father’s side, albeit smaller, but enduring, with many of his siblings. A few friends who were still in Taiping came to visit. We went to Lai Ma and Lai Pa to pai nin, my oldest loved ones. My children got to meet my godbrother’s children. We went to a friend’s house to pai nin, a far cry from the heydays, but a window to it. Only gambling was missing; who has time with young children?

The Malaysian Government legalized fireworks again. We purchased approved, taxed firecrackers from the many industrious stalls that popped up all over town. I revel in seeing my children enjoying something from my childhood.

We also visited the lake garden, a highlight of my hometown. It felt surreal as my children sat on an aged, dull, dinosaur-carved stone. I had an exact picture of me sitting there when I was my son’s age, the dinosaur then shining bright.

I suppose this is how time passes—traditions slowly change, shifting from generation to generation.

My parents must have had their own version of Chinese New Year, just as I had mine. Now, I try to pass what I can to my children, even as the experience takes a different shape, especially since we live far away from home.

My children quickly learned the magic words to receive a hong bao. The moment one appeared before them, they clasped one hand over the other in the traditional Chinese greeting, smiled, and proudly declared, ‘Gung Hei Faat Coi!’ I couldn’t have felt prouder as a Chinese mother.

I watched as my son secretly opened all the hong baos in the room, counting the money he received with glee, and saw my young self mirrored back at me. I guess some things don't change.

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