July 2021 Musings
On Learning, A month of Blessings, Planning a Wedding During Pandemic
Hey there,
This month has got to be the most exciting month of the year.
17 Jul — Jingles and I got married.
19 Jul — My Youtube reached 1,000 subscribers. (whattt! I am mind blown.)
21 Jul — Also, I turned 32 this month.
24 Jul — And we are fully vaccinated (well technically, we need 14 days after our 2nd dose)
Because it was such an eventful month, I have not been keeping up with my habit of writing on a daily basis. I keep a journal and try to record my daily highlights. But from 11 July till now, nothing was recorded. I’ve slacked off and now I can’t wait to go back on track, back to my routine from exercising, writing and creating.
I’m thankful for my blessings. The lead up to our wedding has been full of events — me coming into close contact with someone with covid 1 week before our wedding, Jingle’s grandma being hospitalised, my grandfather having fever the day before my wedding and even after the wedding, a covid cluster was formed at Marina Bay Sands casino. I held my wedding at Marina Bay Sands and my Dad went to the casino a week prior.
Looking back, life is full of uncertainty. There were so many events that could change the course of what July could have been. We decided to hold our wedding just 2 weeks after Singapore opened up. And just a few days after our wedding, Singapore shut down again due to the exponential spread of Covid. So I’m incredibly grateful for God’s protection, love from my friends and family.
This brings me to the quote of the month. It’s our wedding verse and it is a reminder for us to embody in our marriage. Not just marriage, but with people around us.
I hope you love this verse as much as we do.
Thank you for reading,
Ying Ying
Quote of the month
2 Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. 3 Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. 4 For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. — Ephesians 4:2–4
Challenges & Learnings of the month
Negative Comments on Youtube
The thing about Youtube is that you put yourself in public. And since I went ‘viral’ this month, there are more people who watch my videos. That means more diverse opinions. It’s hard to be wrong or rather, sometimes it’s hard to put down your pride to understand where you are wrong about.
While most people are really constructive, some are just rude. I shouldn’t let it affect me, but sometimes I know that I need to at least try to understand from that rude person’s point of view. Perhaps there is something he or she can teach me?
Writer Jorge Luis Borges on transforming every experience into a resource:
“A writer — and, I believe, generally all persons — must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.”
I realised that those who cared enough spend their time writing comments on my videos. The least I could do is to read them, understand from their perspective so that I can be educated and learn something new during the process. As a start, I could be kind in my replies and hope that the person could change their tone and manner in response.
Do I actually need more information or do I simply need to act on the information I already have?
During the last phase of our wedding, I experienced decision fatigue. There were simply too many things to decide. I didn’t have the luxury of time and there were too many moving parts when it comes to planning a wedding during Covid.
There were times when I got frustrated and upset. Especially during times when I think that Jingles didn’t do much, or rather, he wasn’t involved in some areas. Furthermore, my expectations were high and wanted things to be planned in detail. I wanted people are around me to live up to my expectations. Each decision needs to be ‘optimized’ for all the various factors.
Eventually, I realised that I had to let go, start making decisions and be okay that things did not happen the way I want.
What I have been reading and consuming
For anything you want to learn, there are now an endless supply of free and paid materials online to give you a world-class understanding of that topic. You could go to the Olympics!
So why don’t more of us take advantage of it? Access and cost is no longer the limiting factor. You’d definitely get a better education with 4 years of well-curated YouTube videos than any university can give you.
The big difference seems to be motivation.
How to Take Smart Notes
Leo Tolstoy on Kindness and the Measure of Love
Love is real only when a person can sacrifice himself for another person. Only when a person forgets himself for the sake of another, and lives for another creature, only this kind of love can be called true love, and only in this love do we see the blessing and reward of life. This is the foundation of the world.
Nothing can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness. — Tolstoy
People believe what they’ve seen happen exponentially more than what they read about has happened to other people if they read about other people at all. We’re all biased to our own personal history. Everyone. If you’ve lived through hyperinflation, or a 50% bear market, or were born to rich parents, or have been discriminated against, you both understand something that people who haven’t experienced those things never will, but you’ll also likely overestimate the prevalence of those things happening again, or happening to other people.
Start with the assumption that everyone is innocently out of touch and you’ll be more likely to explore what’s going on through multiple points of view, instead of cramming what’s going on into the framework of your own experiences. It’s hard to do. It’s uncomfortable when you do. But it’s the only way to get closer to figuring out why people behave like they do
This writing is first posted here.
