Once a month, I send out a newsletter. It's a different kind of space from my YouTube channel — a bit quieter, more personal, and a place for my in-the-moment reflections on culture, psychology, and the art of living a more examined life.
I thought I would share this month's letter with you here on the blog, to give you a feel for what that conversation is like.
With Halloween just around the corner, I found myself thinking about our relationship with fear, death, and life's great mysteries, and the beautiful, strange ways different cultures choose to live alongside their ghosts. I hope you find some value in these thoughts.
Bonjour à tous,
And for those of you who celebrate it, a very Happy Halloween.
I must admit that Halloween is a tradition I've always found curious. Growing up in the time and place I did, it was something I knew more from TV shows than real life experiences of celebrating. The mash-up of fun and spooky was something I found intriguing, but slightly off-putting too.
The older I've gotten, however, the more I've come to appreciate Halloween in a wider cultural context. Having lived in South-East Asia, I saw how many different cultures have ritualised traditions around death and the super-natural – which include celebrations.
They're moments for enjoyment – but also reflection about the transience of life, the fears we have about this mortal realm, and our beliefs about what, if anything, lies beyond it. Not the usual subjects of "comfortable conversation" but the sort that we can have growthful realisations if we get out of comfort zone and think about from time to time.
During the Hungry Ghost Month in Singapore, ethnically Chinese people believe the gates of the underworld open for spirits to return and make mischief.
During this month of the lunar calendar, the many people who take this seriously go into a kind of spiritual emergency-mode where they are vigilant about which colours of clothing to wear, not to hang laundry at night or not to go swimming (hauntings may otherwise happen). The streets fill with offerings (even more than usual), and Chinese opera performances (Wayang) are staged in public — where you are free to sit in any row except the first, which is reserved, always, for the ghosts.
One of the places I regret not visiting in my travels of Indonesia is Tana Toraja, a mountain village on the island of Sulawesi. Like many rural South-East Asians, the Torajan people have a religious faith that blends western monotheism (Christian in their case) with the native ones that predated the former's arrival. Instead of hiding their dead away, they carve lifelike wooden effigies, known as tau tau, to represent them. These tau tau are dressed in the ancestor's clothes and placed on balconies carved high into sacred cliff faces, creating a gallery of ancestors who look out over the town. Behind them, in chambers hewn from the rock, the actual coffins are interred.
The townspeople live under the unblinking gaze of these effigies, leaving them offerings of cigarettes and other gifts. What Western culture might quickly label "superstition" is, in practice, a striking example of a culture that does not sever its connection with the dead, but keeps them as visible, honored members of the community. So much so that they have a tradition of regularly exhuming the bodies of their ancestors and bringing them out to live in their homes with them (sometimes for longer or longer) – a ritual known as Manene.
The oldest artistic trope of a skull, the memento mori, was not meant to be morbid. It was a simple, powerful reminder: "Remember you must die." Its purpose was not to incite fear of death, but to inspire an appreciation for life.
If the bigger questions stirred up by this season — about evil, about faith, about what happens when we die — are feeling particularly present for you, therapy can be a safe space to explore life's profound mysteries and to find your own sense of meaning within them, without judgement.
Perhaps this season can serve as a gentle memento mori for us all. Thai Buddhists would say that all you ever truly have is the present moment. I take that to mean, among other things, that your happiness, right now, is always worth cultivating.
Wishing you a thoughtful and peaceful end to your October.
All the best,
Robert
You're in the final stretch. Your time studying in Paris — whether it's been months or a year — is coming to an end. It's a strange, chaotic limbo of finishing exams, packing boxes, and navigating a complex swirl of feelings… or perhaps, a kind of numbness.
The first moment I can remember thinking like a conspiracist, I was seven years old. I was watching The X-Files.