do you want freedom or convenience?
was watching ismatu's blueprints, junelikethemonth's live stream, and wild geese podcast episode about convenience culture which made me think about my own desire for freedom. in ismatu's video they talked about getting to know your neighbours (yes even if they are politically opposite to your own beliefs cause in a emergency/disaster they are the ones that are physically closest to you. if there is a prior relationship before the crisis then there's already the trust and willingness to help each other.) after much thought, while i agree with them. i just am not in the place where i will write letters to my neighbours and talk to them, truthfully speaking i'm scared. i'm scared of making a fool of myself and no one responds back. i'm not saying i won't do it ever, maybe in the future i find the courage to walk next door and say hi. for now i'll try to get to know my digital neighbours, so i left my first ever comment on their video. it was nerve wrecking, i had to force myself to post my reply and leave the page.
it's important to me to live aligned to my values, if i say i value freedom - well then i'm gonna have to practice it. in their video they talk about community building as a muscle, that yeah of course it's not comfortable and you don't know what to expect, but you need to make an effort of showing up.
which brings me to june's livestream where she was doing food prep and talking about the hidden cost of our choices. when she was cutting up the $1 pineapple she bought, she made the comparison of how some people prefer to buy cut pineapple in the grocery store (me!) and pay more for another person's labour of preparing the fruit for consumption. she wasn't saying that one way is better than the other, just that we need to consider what exactly are we exchanging our time/money for. then she mentioned that perhaps if we keep purchasing cheap stuff that we know (probably) involved slave labour it does something to our psyche. eventually the costs adds up and our body might start to reject the stuff we keep feeding it.
i sort of agree with her, i often think about the kind of person i want to be. i'm not immune to the allure of convenience culture, one only needs to look at my credit card statement to know that i don't make the most financially responsible choices. i spend pretty recklessly - taking grab rides when i could have left home earlier and reached wherever i needed to be with public transport, ordering food delivery from places that are literally a walk away from my home, scrolling endlessly on instagram/shopee/tumblr to chase the next dopamine hit.
all of which is to say that i'm aware of my own contradictions and i'm trying to be compassionate with myself. in the wild geese episode it talked about when we pursue whatever feels good all the time, we neglect building our own self-respect. that by going for the convenient option time and time again, we slowly lose touch with ourselves. and i don't want that to happen to me. so i'm writing this as a reminder that i can do difficult things, and it's okay to do it slowly.