The Broad Swath

The Chinese have a word which translates roughly into fate: 缘. Interestingly, this word is also a homophone with the Chinese characters for “reason/origin”, and “round/complete/circular”. Throughout my life, there’ve been more than a couple of moments where I am reminded of this self-fulfilling and cyclic aspect of fate, where things seem to return to me, or I to them.

The same is true for this website. As you know, the broad swath is a reference to one of Thoreau’s oft quoted sections^[1]Where I Lived and What I Lived For in Walden. And there is a reason why it has stayed with me across the years.

More than a decade ago, I was conscripted into the military. Every morning the platoons would gather for morning reveille. While other recruits were receiving pep talks for the day, we had a sergeant who’d stand with a copy of Walden in hand and read us passages from it. He had read History at Oxford and upon his return could have had a comfy position at staff HQ. But he elected to serve on the ground instead, to help train the recruits.

Two months on, my platoon graduated from training school and we were assigned to different military vocations. I never thought I’d see him again.

But I did. Close to a year later, we met in the most impossible of places, in a remote region of the country. The train ride was too short. So we got off and continued over coffee — a conversation sprinkled with thoughts on behavioural economics, the nature of beauty and the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. At his recommendation, I applied to Oxford and the following year, I matriculated at the Sheldonian. Less than three hundred yards from his own college. So there you go, a curious case of things that seem to have their own way of coming full circle.

Agglomeration

Long story short, I have many independent entries posted on Facebook or just stored on my computer. These pieces represent different aspects of myself. Over the years the pieces are finally coming together and I feel it is time to consolidate these under a unified framework which reflects my worldview.

Facebook’s decision to remove its Notes function also catalysed my decision. I am tired of how content is propagated on the news feed. The environment for detailed and substantive discussion deteriorates when posts (and corresponding comments) do not exceed a certain word length. I dont mean that there arent insightful articles. I mean that there’s no meaningful engagement afterwards. Knowledge and advice is handed out and treated as the end product instead of being used as the starting point for further dialogue.

I want people to read and think about what I’ve written. Better if they do their own research and critique. But all too often the responses are limited to inane, instinctive and insipid clicks on the like button. And sometimes I catch myself doing this too! So no, I dont need likes. All I want (for Christmas and beyond) is for my reader to be in the state of mind for reading (and thinking — though surely this should already be embedded in the definition of reading).

Instead of foisting my thoughts on you through social media at inopportune moments, I leave them here. With you. At a time and place of your choosing. Together with a bit of Eliot that has stayed with me over the years:

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