Mouthful of Ahimsa

Trails in the Forest

August 2, 2026

Metaphors

There is a forest. It is vast and dense. Looking at it from the outside, it looks impenetrable. And it all looks the same. One big overwhelming forest. But it has trails. Marked and unmarked. Mapped and unmapped. And there are unique identifiers within the forest that can show me how to find my bearings and work out where I am. And from there I will know where I can go, and where I want to go. I only need to learn. It takes patience, it takes courage, it takes attention, and it takes time. But the big impenetrable overwhelm can be broken down into digestible mouthfuls. And meaning can be made here, as anywhere.

As a dear friend advised me many years ago, you eat an elephant like you eat anything else, one bite at a time. And that is also how I must eat my forest. One mouthful at a time. Leaving the elephants within the forest in peace. Them I am not here to eat. Not literally anyway. Maybe metaphorically, and only from afar. Elephants are amazing. There are many amazing things in the forest. Slowly and gradually I am learning how to see.

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Khaled Khalafalla at The Comics Lounge, North Melbourne

August 1, 2026

Entertainment

It has been a solid while since I attended a stand up comedy show that had this level of grace, class, and heart in it. Incredibly skilful storytelling, with a poetic quality to the writing that I don’t think I’ve ever seen in a stand up show before. Not to mention cultural resonance flavoured with reverence, innocence, humanness, and inspiration. This was my first time watching Khaled Khalafalla live and it will not be the last. I am a FAN.

Originally planned as a date afternoon for Pencil and myself, it turned into an unexpected last minute switch to a friend catch up with a dear human, G, whom I hadn’t had the good fortune of catching up with for a while, and I cannot imagine a better person to have attended this show with than her. It was also funnily enough my first time at The Comic’s Lounge – I say funnily because I watch so much live comedy, and so many artists I love have performed here, that it’s actually very surprising to me that I managed to not attend anything here so far until today! Great venue. Big fan of this also, and the table service dinner format. Like gold class at the movies (minus the reclining chairs and extensive personal space lol) but for stand up comedy. So(mewhat) bougie, I know.

I used to be a churchie for many years, and since deconverting, one of the things I’ve truly missed has been having a space of regular gathering with “my people” over deep, reflective, themed journeys (like a Sunday service organized around a sermon, or a Bible study group organized around collective musing over a chosen passage). This show unexpectedly landed right in that void, and nourished me in a way that I haven’t really experienced in a group setting in a long time. I have never before equated the role of a stand up comedian with the role of a religious minister but if Khaled Khalafalla shepherded a congregation, I would sign up SO QUICK. I felt a real sense of belonging with the people in the audience, even though I spoke to no one but G, because of this sense that we were all there because we were drawn to the same heart. Also, Khaled specifically spoke of the connection between everyone present, and addressed everyone with the tenderness of a shepherd addressing his flock (I don’t know how this works in literal terms, idk if shepherds actually speak to their sheep, but the metaphor is a common one in churchie circles so I’m using it that way).

I’ve been speaking mostly of the deeply nourishing human and social aspects of the show, but it really was masterfully crafted as a whole and riotously funny as well. I cannot remember the last time I laughed this hard and felt so many feelings in such an immersed way at a stand up* comedy show. My goodness. 6 stars out of 5.

*I’ve referred to this as a stand up show a lot, but Khaled Khalafalla was actually sitting down for the whole show so I don’t know what to call that. I actually don’t think I’ve seen any other stand up comedians do their whole show sitting down either. Fascinating.

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Why don’t we know where it all goes?

July 31, 2026

Existentialism, Waste

I put my rubbish in the kitchen bin. I tie the rubbish bag and put it in the outside bin. I put the outside bin on the nature strip and the truck comes around once a week and collects the rubbish. I bring the bin back in. I put more rubbish in the kitchen bin -> outside bin -> collected by truck -> repeat multiple times a week for 52 rubbish collections a year times however many years I am on this earth for.

How many bags of rubbish have I created already and how many more will I create in my lifetime? Where is all this rubbish going and how much of this rubbish will outlive me and how much of this rubbish will directly or indirectly hurt the plant and animal life and air and water on this planet? How much of this rubbish will go back into the cycle of positive consumption (like kitchen scraps -> garden compost) and how much of the rubbish I produce will have a net neutral effect (eg recycling? I don’t even know how that works, but I can theorize)?

Why have I spent nearly 4 decades on this planet and I still don’t know how rubbish systems work? Is it just me that doesn’t know, or do most people not know? How does one learn? I know I can just google it but it feels like a daunting thing, to begin to learn? I want to learn though. This post is me mentally preparing myself to begin learning. I want to know where my rubbish goes and I want to know how to be better for the planet. I want to stop being ignorant, I want to learn to use less plastic, I want to throw away less rubbish that will outlive me and hurt the planet.

Jean-Paul Sartre said in his 1946 lecture Existentialism is a Humanism, “there is no reality except in action… there is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving; there is no genius other than that which is expressed in works of art. The genius of Proust is the totality of the works of Proust; the genius of Racine is the series of his tragedies, outside of which there is nothing. Why should we attribute to Racine the capacity to write yet another tragedy when that is precisely what he did not write? In life, a man commits himself, draws his own portrait and there is nothing but that portrait.”

I’m not 100% sure how this relates to the rest of what I just said but I know it does and it’s late at night so I’m going to stop here and figure it out later. Just like I’m going to figure out later where the rubbish goes and what I need to do about it.

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I Don’t Wanna

July 30, 2026

Consent, Growth

I’ve been an adult for a couple of decades now and one big difference between when I was a child* and now is that [in theory] no one can turn my no into a yes except myself. Consent and all that.

But there are so many times (SO. MANY. TIMES.) that I am presented with a thing, that I maybe signed myself up for even, but in the moment of actually doing it, I just don’t wanna. Like I have a gym membership, but do I go? No. Because? Sometimes because of my asthma, but mostly because when I’m able to go, I don’t wanna. And it’s the kind of “I don’t wanna” that a little bit of slowing down and working on could turn around into a “maybe I do wanna”. But when I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna be pushy and reason with myself about it either, and no one else is really allowed to do that to me either except me. Consent and all that.

I had a university tutorial tonight that I didn’t wanna go to. Because I didn’t choose it myself (I chose a different time but got reallocated to this one), because I didn’t feel prepared (I hadn’t done the readings), and because I just didn’t wanna. Right up to the start time of the tutorial I was flip flopping between whether or not I’d go. But then I went. I didn’t switch my camera or mic on except during breakout rooms, because I didn’t wanna. I didn’t go in with a commitment to stay to the end, I just went in and kept staying a bit longer till it got to the end and I’d stayed the whole time. And I wasn’t an “enthusiastic yes” to the whole experience by a long shot. But I challenged my “soft no” and turned it into a “soft yes” and at the end of it I was glad I went. Relieved, proud of myself, and felt like I learned something and experienced positive outcomes and grew. I even had a really good breakout room experience with my fellow students, especially considering how reluctant and unprepared I had felt throughout.

In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear talks about “the Goldilocks rule” – the key to finding the sweet spot for achieving meaningful growth. This sweet spot is the optimal challenge zone that gets one motivated and into a state of flow. A level of challenge that is just outside one’s comfort zone – within reach from one’s starting point so it’s not discouraging, and just beyond the starting point (apparently the exact measure is 4% beyond) so that it’s not boring. I definitely felt like tonight’s tutorial was in that sweet spot for me. Challenging enough to feel like a mental stretch but so within reach at the same time, and reinforcing the benefits of not letting my soft no dictate my ultimate actions when I don’t wanna (but actually maybe I do wanna).

ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) promotes something similar in its concept of “committed action” – action that is in line with one’s values, that is pursued despite discomfort or other emotional obstacles. I like having vocabulary for all of this because it helps me frame my relationship to my internal yes/no states as a kind of superficial consent vs deeper consent, and allows me greater space to get acquainted with my own ultimate consent lines, and act accordingly.

*I’m not saying a child’s no should be turned into a yes in a way that an adult’s shouldn’t. But I grew up in a time and place where it was what it was.

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Rumi, Brunswick East

July 29, 2026

Food

At the start of this year, Pencil and I resolved to explore the world from right here at home by cooking a meal a week from a different country, going from A-Z.

We spent the first 7 months of this year trying to decide where to start. Strong contenders for the letter “A” included Andorra, Azerbaijan, and Angola. We made some progress on researching recipes and ingredients, and planning a night to do the thing, but didn’t quite make it to the follow through stage.

By the end of July, I made an executive decision for us – instead of trying to cook a novel foreign cuisine meal each week, we were going to switch gears and just eat a new foreign cuisine meal each week.

I told Pencil that I was taking him out for a mystery meal tonight, and we ended up at Rumi in Brunswick East for dinner. This restaurant doesn’t focus on any specific country’s cuisine, but the broader region of the Middle East. Rumi – the poet-philosopher that this restaurant is named after – was born in Afghanistan, and even though his life and influence extended far beyond Afghanistan, I’m still counting this meal as a tick against the letter “A”. (Sue me.)

Great meal, especially the Sigara Böreği (cheese cigars), Almond Taratoor dip, and Eggplant M’nazleh. I will be going back.

And as for Pencil and my adventure exploring world cuisines, we have 5 months and 25 cuisines to go.

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Trails in the Forest

Khaled Khalafalla at The Comics Lounge, North Melbourne

Why don’t we know where it all goes?

I Don’t Wanna

Rumi, Brunswick East