Eric Tian

I’ll admit it, I don’t like doing chores. Some chores – such as cleaning the toilet or doing the laundry – are okay, but I have a particular aversion for others like doing the dishes, vacuuming or cleaning my room. This aversion usually leads to my apartment being in a sub-optimum state and is mostly due to my mindset towards these chores: I’ve always seen them as a necessary evil; they’re boring, take effort and I would rather not do them (is the floor that messy? Surely not…). When I do end up doing chores, I usually require some sort of distraction in the form of a podcast or audiobook to get through the mundanity of it.

I’ve held this attitude for some time now, but I recently came across an article called Do What You Are Doing. The idea is that when we do anything, we should be fully immersed in whatever it is, rather than thinking about other things. The author, David, quotes a passage from a book on Speed Cleaning:

Pay attention. Almost everything else will fall into place if you do. Don’t think about revisions in the tax code. Or anything else. In Latin: Age quod agis—”Do what you are doing.”

David continues:

I take this to mean something more than just “don’t get distracted from the act of cleaning.” I interpret it as, “bring all of your concern to exactly the task you’re on now,” whether it’s wiping away soup spatters from the stovetop, or dragging the coffee table aside so you can vacuum.  

Reading this was a lightbulb moment for me. Perhaps my mindset towards chores was wrong. Perhaps I should see them as opportunities – opportunities to find contentment in the mundane, instead of seeing them as a waste of time.

And so, I tried it. When I needed to do the dishes next, I put down my headphones and reminded myself of Age quod agis—”Do what you are doing.” I proceeded to do the dishes, trying to be as fully immersed on the task as I could be. I focused on all the stains on the dishes, felt the sponge against the metal and washed every dish carefully, taking in the sensation of the warm water running against my skin. It was an oddly fascinating experience, one which has helped me break down my aversion towards the task.

Since this practice, I’ve begun to notice more things in passing. That really oddly-shaped stone on the ground. That faint, but beautiful melody from a distant bird. That certain phrase that my friend actually says quite a lot. This concept – that people, places, chores can be fascinating if you try – have added a little bit of extra magic to each day and is something I’ll be looking to apply in other areas of life.

One of the most popular openings in chess is called the Queen’s Gambit. It’s played by White, who begins with d4, whereby black responds with d5. White then pushes its pawn to c4, attacking black’s pawn, but is itself able to be captured by black. It looks like this:

When I first studied this opening, I thought it was stupid. If
black captures c4 (the Queen’s Gambit accepted), white has no way to immediately
win back the piece – you’re essentially giving away a free pawn. Why on earth
would anyone play this opening?

After studying more, I realised there is another story at play. If black captures c4, white can then play e4, allowing white to control the centre with its pawns. Turns out, controlling the centre is a fundamental tactic across all levels of chess, which I hadn’t known before. Only now does this opening make sense: with e4, white can control the centre and set up for a solid midgame position while black’s centre is more exposed and open to threats. The position now looks like this:

One lesson I took away from my Queen’s Gambit experience that applies outside of chess is one I’ll call undiscovered narratives. The reason the Queen’s Gambit was so baffling to me initially was because I hadn’t discovered the narrative of centre control. To look at this opening from a purely material perspective – the only narrative I knew – this opening was absolute garbage, sacking a pawn on the 2^nd move. You can’t get much worse than that. But in light of this new narrative of centre control, the Queen’s Gambit made a lot more sense.

There are narratives in motion across all domains. The narrative of investing reasons why people save money instead of indulging on luxuries. The narrative of health reasons why people spend time and money on exercise. And the narrative of centre control in chess reasons why the Queen’s Gambit is a pretty legit opening. Without these narratives, these actions might seem questionable at best, plain stupid otherwise.

But of course, there are more complex narratives at play than the ones given above – ones involving aspirations, fears or motivations in peoples’ lives, for instance. These more nuanced narratives are constantly shifting in light of new experiences and coalesce with other narratives to mould one’s idiosyncrasies and values. It amazes me how many diverse narratives might exist out there, and how many I have yet to discover.

This serves as a reminder for me to pause before jumping to conclusions or criticising others. Just like the undiscovered narrative of centre control, there are undiscovered narratives playing out in other’s lives which I am ignorant to, and are likely far more deep and complex than I could ever imagine. It would certainly be a blunder to make judgements about others without considering any undiscovered narratives which might be in motion. Reflecting on this reminds me of the word sonder, defined as:

n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

What a humbling thought.