It’s been a minute and a half, hasn’t it friends? I just had to go get some water at the back of the cabin for the sake of crafting this email. It’s great that we can encourage each other across time and space in a positive way. So let’s get to it: go grab a hydrating libation and let’s jump in head first into some thought-meanderings.
We’ve just spent a delightful summer nesting in Málaga at our new jādu headquarters. I’ve learned that it nurtures my mind and soul to have carefully crafted surroundings. When you stop to think about it, our surroundings are filled with opportunities to turn mundane micro-moments into a spark of joy, a space for reflection, a jolt of aesthetic appreciation, a prayer of gratitude. Everything from how the kitchen utensils are organized to how we want to organize the art collection across our walls: small and big details around us touch our daily lives in profound (albeit sometimes imperceptible) ways. For those that want a more colorful picture: we use a water and black soap spray to clean surfaces that are often used; I’ve been adding lavender essential oil to it so that every time I clean I’m washed over with this accompanying feeling of lightness and calm. I’ve also added some posture inspiring art in front of my face (next to my monitor). Check out a pic of it here!
You know what else has surprised me? I’ve been finding joy in some of the repetitive ordinary flows of life, like loading and unloading the dishwasher. Nomadic life isn't filled with many “repeats”, which also makes it challenging to develop nourishing inspiring rituals (as you might remember, traveling hits hard my yoga and meditation practice). I'm looking forward to finding ways to recommit to my rituals as we embark on nomadism for the next 6 months. Part of what makes rituals hard is when they feel like routine. It’s interesting how so many of our repetitive flows get this bad rep of rote routine. I suppose part of what distinguishes routine from ritual is the fulfillment that comes from the consistent repetitive flow. One question I have for you is: how might we be able to turn our routines into rituals?
This summer we also had the tremendous gift of hosting many loving and loved souls over in Málaga. So many laughs and joys and epiphanies sprouted from these precious moments. A common theme in a lot of conversations was the role that dogma plays in our critical thinking process. Many of our conversations unwrapped how our dogmas color the way that we view the world. Whether it’s because of religious, scientific, politically polarized thinking or mental illness: we are all susceptible to filtering out incoming information due to our dogmas (or the lenses through which we see the world). I’ve recently been wrestling with the productivity economy and brainstorming what the future of “employment” will look like. Let me know if you’re curious and I can share with you some of my latest meanderings there. Another question for you: have you been deconstructing any dogmas recently?
What else is up? Well, Simu and I are starting to craft how our other 6 months a year will look like when we’re not at the jādu headquarters. We’re playing around with two dreams. One of them is buying rural property in northern Portugal and building a Chinese courtyard-style set of multi-family homes (which could enable us to both work on fulfilling community projects and foster more communal living quarters). We’re also thinking about doing education community service for half of the year at some of our family schools in India. We’re planning on heading to Gujarat (northwest India) in February to try out this dream (life and fate allowing). We’ll report back on what we see and feel!
As for where we are in the flesh? We’ll be in NYC for about a week starting tomorrow (WAT!). For my NYC peeps: if you’d like to hang out and hydrate together, let me know. I’ll be posting up at some tea shop for quite a few days co-working. Would love your company, and would love to exchange some laughs and ketchup on life!
After that we’re off to Japan and Southeast Asia for the rest of 2023. If you’ve had any life-changing experiences in Tokyo, Singapore, Thailand or Malaysia, we’d love to hear more about those too!
With so much love,
Alda
❤️