89 - A Good Question

to kick things off.

👋 Hello, reader.

Welcome to the year 2022. I have many big plans for the year. But before I jump into them, I want to pause and ask myself a good question.

I’m still in Kolkata this week, but next week at this time I will be sipping an orange juice while flying through the air at several hundred kms per hour. So it goes.

Welcome to the SneakyArt Post. If you like what you read, share it with someone else who may enjoy it too.

🧠 A Good Question

I like good questions. Good questions reward us twice - once when the question occurs to us, and later again when we think of a good answer.

But I have come to realize this is not the case for most people. People will go out of their way to avoid good questions, because they want to avoid the kind of answers that might come from them. People dislike good answers because good answers have a kind of inevitability about them. Once they are revealed to us, they cannot be denied. They compel us to shake off our inertia and take action. This makes people itchy and uncomfortable.

The start of a new year is a good time to ask good questions. There is one good question that is particularly unavoidable, even if you hate such exercises. The exact wording may differ, but here’s what it sounds like -

“What’s so special about January 1st, that isn’t special about October 15th? Or June 10th? What’s the big deal?”

It’s a classic good question and it comes with a classic good answer -

“It’s just a day like any other.”

It’s a good question because it makes us reconsider the rules we happily follow the rest of the year. What is a day? Why is a month? Who is time? How is any moment actually different from any other moment? Where did these calendars come from anyway?

The answer comes to us quickly, because it has been handed down to us just like the calendars and just like this question. But it would be a good idea to not leap at the answer right away.

In between the voicing of the question and arriving at the answer, there are a few precious moments. I think of it as a kind of Schrodinger’s Interval, with our entire universe suspended in a limbo of infinite possibilities. For a few moments, we stand outside of Time, suspended in Space, beholding the entire Universe at once. It would be a good idea to not hurry back to Life.

It’s just a day like any other.

There isn’t really anything special about January 1st. The words don’t even mean anything. It’s an arbitrary point chosen in our planet’s revolution around our star. We didn’t even choose it ourselves. Only a few people were involved in the choosing, and all of them are dead hundreds of years.

We accept the decision, and participate in this mass delusion, because it is so useful. It helps us to put arbitrary markers in the progression of Time. It helps us to believe in cycles that repeat themselves. The point of this good question is not to reject our clocks and throw away our Apple Watches, but to see behind the curtain, to know that there is a delusion in place, and appreciate its usefulness in getting things done.

Clocks and calendars are one kind of delusion we share with the rest of humanity. There are many other useful constructs. They can form the basis of many other good questions, whenever you are in the mood for them.

We don’t have to get into it right now.

📅 First Week

The first week of 2022 was spent in COVID recovery. My symptoms, already mild, gradually subsided, and I was able to reduce the distance I was keeping from the rest of the family.

The first big step was agreeing to sit 15 feet away on our terrace in the mornings. My parents would shout out the crossword clues for me to solve.

Once the symptoms had subsided, I felt comfortable spending time in the living room, sitting in the corner with a mask on. Sitting on the other couch was a big day.

This morning, we solved the crossword together again, and I sat at the same table.

🎙 Updates

• New recordings begin later this month, for which I am now starting to email potential guests. If there is someone you think I should speak with, tell me in the comments!

• I have a couple of older recordings still to share, which were stalled when my laptop stopped working. I will begin to edit them this week, and hopefully give Insiders a first listen next week.

• I have some bold ideas for a new format of podcast episodes. It would be a lot of fun, but it would also be very challenging. In order to do it right, I will have to do it wrong a couple of times. These early attempts will be first shared with SneakyArt Insiders. I hope to get some useful feedback from them!

• This year is going to be about pulling SneakyArt Insiders closer to form a ring around my work. If 2021 was the year to do many things, 2022 is about building upon them and having the courage to take giant steps. The support of super-fans and eager listeners is a crucial safety net, a guiding light, a support staff - pick your choice of metaphor! - and I intend to use it in all those ways.

• If you want to enter this close circle of feedback, if you want to help me craft a new edition of the SneakyArt Podcast, sign up to become a SneakyArt Insider! It costs less than a cup of coffee every month, and helps me to do my best job as an independent creator.

• Not only are Insiders part of an inner circle of SneakyArt, I also share with them exclusive content every week. I just put together a list of Insider content, some of which is open to free reading/listening. Take a look!

📝 Table of (Insider) Content

Thank you for your time and attention. I’ll see you next week with final observations from India, and better ideas about how this year is going to pan out.