6 – Privileged

1- Coming from a developing country, I rarely feel privileged, instead, having adopted the dominant narrative I often feel as a helpless victim, and tend to apply this narrative to my private life reflections by inertia which is a type of resistance to being productive. Here, there are cleaning ladies, who keep my apartment clean and tidy. They often go an extra mile, and iron, fold and put my clothes in the drawer, they organize items around, in addition to cleaning the dishes, the whole apartment and washing the clothes.

They sometimes forget the lights on which affects my electricity bills, especially when I am not at home for a long time, which was the case, the last time. So, I kindly mentioned this to the management (also, kindly asking for this to be taking in consideration when payment time comes). I tried to demonstrate to the cleaning ladies to be mindful about the light, but the lights were still left on (they do not speak English and I am ignorant about their language). I did not have any bad intention, but I was also not thinking that there are certain narratives in this culture, too, so that I would approach this challenge differently.

I have papers glued all over my walls to remind me about things that I should do during the day in an attempt to advance my well-being. One of them is to eat rice, instead of buying junk food when I think my fridge is empty.

Today, I got a long message on my phone from the building management saying that the issue with the lights has been resolved. In addition, they wrote that they saw my note about the ‘rice-eating’ and that they spoke to the cleaning ladies about it. They were reassuring me that the cleaning ladies are not eating my food. I was left speechless. I replied explaining that their service is excellent and that the note was there for myself to be reminded to eat rice.

2- Today, I was tempted to forget about everything and instead reflect, phiosophize and chat on social media all day long. This gave me a negative sense of non-achievement as I overdid the reflection, immersed in a sense of guilt. The papers glued on my walls reminded me that I should go to eat.

I also overslept. I tend to do that on unplanned weekends, so I organized meetings with people for today and tomorrow. I hope the commitment to my habits won’t be deprioritized because of this.

5- I did some yoga and wrote a lot. There are also the other habits that I want to nurture today. 119 days to go.