Last year I wrote that I wanted to be able to do one pull up. This year, I just want the year to progress uneventfully.
I first started using the word “uneventful” when my traditional chinese medicine physician asked if I had any symptoms between my visits: there were rare times when I would tell her I didn’t have any symptoms in the couple of weeks since I last saw her, and she would respond, “oh so it was uneventful?” – that was when I learnt that having an “uneventful” time was actually a good thing.
Once upon a time I read “Dark Mattter” by Blake Crouch (some spoilers incoming). I became thoroughly disturbed that the protagonist lost his wife because of his travel between parallel universes. The version of his wife in his new parallel universe was not married to him or in love with him. My partner has this tendency to have wild crazy dreams so we joked that she was visiting some parallel universes. Since reading this book I started this habit of whispering to her before we sleep: please find me tomorrow – imploring her to remember to come back to us regardless of where she travelled during her dreams because I don’t want to wake up in a world where this version of her doesn’t exist.
Yes I know the book is just a work of fiction, and it is highly unlikely that my partner would just randomly disappear the next day – even if this world is a simulation it wouldn’t be so glitchy I hope – but the point is not that this would actually happen in reality, but it is a little ritual to remind the both of us that I greatly love and value this precise version of her in this precise version of reality, and wouldn’t want it any way else.
Some time after ingesting the meaning behind the word, “uneventful”, I would add on hope tomorrow is uneventful along with please find me tomorrow, in that small window before we fall asleep.
Over the past few years I have woken up to heartbreaking messages, received terrifying phone calls, endured several stressful events, while the rapidly warming world broke out in a pandemic, waged several wars, and continues to have one major disaster after another, with many people-in-power and the general populace exhibiting very disturbing behaviour.
Like my bouts of health that were “uneventful”, I have personally come to realise it is precious to have days when nothing much is happening. In the world we are in now, being able to go about our days without much pain, anxiety, worry or sadness is almost like a miracle.
I like days when I don’t receive any texts or phone calls, don’t experience that awful sinking feeling when there is terrible news, don’t have pain plaguing my body, don’t have situations where I am worrying about someone, and I am able to breathe easily and plentifully.
I hope to have many of these uneventful days in 2025, is that too much to ask for?
Maybe it is just ageing, or simply an outcome of what I have personally been through in life. Lately I have found myself thinking more and more that I don’t wish to ask much out of life or my life anymore, I don’t want the gods to become angry (metaphorically, I am not a believer) because I have been too greedy. I don’t even dare to aspire towards more fitness goals. I would be glad if my health stayed in its status quo: allowing me to move around, breathe, eat, sleep and poop without much trouble. I feel like with age and god knows what systemic damage I have suffered with covid and other random infections, I’ve been developing niggling aches and pains here and there. After years of uneventful dental visits with reasonably average dental hygiene I have suddenly needed a root canal late last year, and since reading about people losing their teeth after covid I cannot help but wonder about the state of my teeth, if I would begin to suffer more dental issues in the oncoming years. The virus is known to compromise the immune system, and a functioning immune system is required for dental health. Yes my bout of covid was in 2023, but who knows what it has cascaded within my body?
At this rate my teeth is the least of my worries, considering all the existential threats that the world is facing right now.
So I just want average teeth with average health and live in an average world.
Seems really so simple, but it looks like more improbable as time passes by. Nevertheless, allow me to continue to be greedy: may I have an uneventful year this year.