Habituated by Circumstances
Weekly Epiphanies
Hello Dear Readers,
If you feel that today’s post is too long, just follow the block quotes like the one that highlights this sentence (blue bar on the left). You’ll get a gist of what I want to convey.
When I began my weekly Substack newsletter, I wanted to be more regular in intentional writing, by which I mean, writing towards a purpose. This could be telling a story, or conveying an idea, or a concept. I already had a WordPress blog, The Plausible Mind, where I write on topics that refuse to leave my consciousness for days together. My blog posts on WordPress tend to be diverse and scattered, not regular in their formation but far more deliberate in their expression.
On the other hand, I conceptualised SCubeStoryBasket as a weekly dose of fiction. Over the past year it has morphed into a weekly stream of stories whether real or fictitious. I narrate things that I have observed around me or happened to me in my newsletter, and send out short fiction pieces through my weekend short stories segment.
Compared to The Plausible Mind which depends on my mood and a lot of other factors, SCubeStoryBasket has become a habit due to circumstances. What were the circumstances you may ask? It was my goal to experiment on diverse genres with short fiction, and I gave myself a year to do it. Thus, was born this blog and my short story collection.
As I sent out weekly fiction posts, I felt the need to have a weekly newsletter on real topics to accompany the story — a regular reality check. Gradually, these newsletters have also become a weekly habit. A habit that will hopefully stand in good stead for my progress and development as a writer.
But why am I explaining all this today?
A couple of days ago on our evening walk, we saw a group of senior women dancing to a peppy tune in the open space below the Housing Board apartments. The term Housing Board may bring to mind run-down, old flats placed cheek-by-jowl in crowded neighbourhoods. But that is not the case in Singapore.
The Housing Development Board apartments in Singapore (commonly known as HDBs) are spacious, neat, perfectly constructed apartments with a lively community space at the ground floor called the void deck. The void deck is an emotion for the average Singaporean. The National Heritage Board of Singapore has an interesting paper on the evolution of the void deck as a community space. Every cluster of blocks have public parks and leisure space for the young and old alike. The common outdoor space can be utilised for family functions and community activities. The parks are decked out with exercise machines that can be used by any member of the public for free.
On seeing the elderly ladies dance and exercise, my husband remarked how Singapore is also considered to be in the Blue Zone, a region where people live longer and healthier. Locals would have you know that life in Singapore is not easy, considering the cost of living, the pressure of building a career, and the restrictive size of the island. But there are factors that have contributed to a growing awareness about healthy living.
The entire community situation in Singapore is designed in such a way that stepping out, working out, sharing a few jokes with your neighbours, becomes a habit rather than a chore. The circumstances of living have helped people develop healthy life-affirming habits. There are other policy-driven factors that add to these circumstances: Well-maintained public parks where you invariably meet others who exercise, and a focus on community service from school leading to activity-based volunteering in the silver age group. The above are intentional policies that bring about positive habits.
All this may make it seem like I am an outgoing, community-focused person. I am not! And, still the neighbourhood planning has ensure that I am forced to meet and greet a few acquaintances and friends we have collected in the past few years when we are out on our walks.
There are also other circumstances that have resulted in unintentional benefits. For instance, the regulations for owning vehicles makes it quite expensive, thus making public transport a more viable option, which ultimately means that one does a considerable amount of walking on a daily basis. It also helps that the road construction and design prioritise pedestrians. Vehicle ownership was made a difficult process in order to reduce the traffic congestion on roads, since this is a small city.
Healthcare, though of high quality, is not cheap, so the focus is on preventive maintenance of one’s health. People are wary of falling sick and will take efforts to not let go.
The government has also recently introduced a slew of measures to promote awareness in terms of food grading and regulation. Every dish sold at the food court (where majority of the population eats) as well as popular restaurants, is required to be graded for nutrition levels. The Nutri-grade system awards A, B, C and D grades depending on the levels of sugar and saturated fats, D being the food with maximum levels. I recently discovered that the seemingly healthy shakes, blends and smoothies at a nearby restaurant are graded C and D. Phew!
The nutrition-grade system will ensure that a generation of children grow up knowing that what appears to be healthy need not actually be. Or, a generation of children could grow up paranoid, but the habit of reading labels has benefits that far outweigh the anxieties of eating healthy.
Again, the habit-formation is made easy by circumstances.
My point is that if you want to start a new habit, create the circumstances that will force you to do it regularly, no matter what. This is not my hot take, as anyone who has read James Clear’s Atomic Habits would tell you. However, I have seen this idea work successfully in the neighbourhood communities of Singapore. Of course, the country has an advantage of being small in size, making it easier to roll out policies and systems that work, or make quick changes when they don’t.
We can surely take a leaf from Singapore’s community development techniques to form positive personal habits. Create circumstances that force you to develop positive habits. It is not easy to design your life to build healthy habits because that requires life to be predictable to a large extent, which it is not. Still, if we pay attention to the controllables in our lives, we could build an optimistic routine that we can stick to for most weeks if not days.
One small trick I do to ensure that I cover my daily quota of walking is to walk towards a destination and back. If I were to target a certain number of rounds around the park, I am far more likely to abandon before I reach the last round. However, if I were to walk to a destination, I certainly have to cover the distance and back. There have been times when I have left my bus card at home, so I don’t have the temptation to hop on a bus on the way.
Reading Updates
The library has done its bit to ensure that I won’t break my reading streak easily. The third book in Mick Herron’s Slow Horses series, titled Real Tigers, was available only at one library. So, I reserved it quickly because I am nearly done with the second, Dead Lions. Reserved books cannot be renewed which means I have to stick to the deadline given by the library.
To add to that, on a recent visit to an entirely different library, I found the fourth book, Spook Street, and pounced on it. I congratulated myself for having lined up my reads in a row but imagine my anxiety when I noticed that the fourth book too cannot be renewed. I suppose the copy is in high demand. So, now I have to read two books in three weeks. The only thing to do is to keep aside a set time for reading. See, I have the opportunity to form a habit at least for the rest of the month.
Writing Updates
I haven’t done much on my latest draft this week, and I still need to finish that summary. Although, I did write a short piece on a movie I watched and liked recently. I also have the weekend short story for my paid subscribers. The story titled Scraps of Gratitude has an experimental narrative style from the point of view of a third person observer, in this case, a crow. The story was something that bubbled up in my mind as I listened to a podcast, but I gave it a twist by introducing a crow into the picture.
That’s all for this week. Until next week, keep dreaming, reading and stay happy!
Sudeepa
