Choosing the one thing

Anyone who wants to know how we live must have lunch with us at Maloa. It's a local-run eating place we frequent almost everyday. Yes, before another small eatery opened right next to the library, we had lunch everyday at the same shop. 

Recently, we took some Singaporean friends there. I commented casually that we eat here all the time.

"Does the menu ever change?" one guy asked.

"Hm, not really. It's fried chicken everyday, sometimes, there's fish." 

"Oh...", he said and shook his head. "If I eat at the same hawker centre for three months, I get so sick of it." 

I thought about whether I was sick of the food here. I actually do really like it despite eating it almost everyday. But I couldn't think of any logical reason why that should be so, or how I could help a food-loving Singaporean understand that. So I just kept quiet.

The exchange reminded me of this passage from "Orthodoxy", which I have grown to love.

"Humility was largely meant as a restraint upon the arrogance and infinity of the appetite of man. He was always outstripping his mercies with his own newly invented needs. His very power of enjoyment destroyed half his joys. By asking for pleasure, he lost the chief pleasure; for the chief pleasure is surprise." 

I have come to expect the same lunch day after day. Most days, it's fried chicken with vegetables and a traditional red bean stew. When there's fish, it's like a special treat. If I'm first to arrive at the shop and I see fish behind the counter, I happily announce that to LS and D as they come in behind me. That's when I realise, with amazing clarity, that happiness and enjoyment doesn't come from having many choices as our capitalist society preaches, but springs out of a contented heart that is easily surprised and awed.

Since our satellite dish stopped working more than a year ago (or has it been longer?), we only have access to one TV channel, and a local channel at that. We don't watch TV apart from local news in Tetum from 8pm, if at all. There are no commercials on this channel, or at least, nothing that vaguely resembles what most people would consider a commercial.

So when I happen to be at some place showing a foreign TV channel, and I catch glimpses of commercials, it's...surreal. Suddenly, everyone's telling me that there's something wrong with my face or body or hair or skin colour, and that I would be so much happier if I bought this or that. And so, a wave of long-distance, re-entry culture shock hits me, and a sentiment hard to express arises from the gut and comes out as a frown or a sigh. Save me from these things, and the illusion that more choices will make me happy.

Kierkegaard wrote, "Purity of heart is to will one thing." God is the one thing, the only thing there is to live for, in whom we can be truly happy. This prayer below is attributed to him.

Father in Heaven, what are we without you?
What is all that we know, vast accumulation though it be,
But a chipped fragment if we do not know you?
What is all our striving?
Could it ever encompass a world,
But a half-finished work
If we do not know you?
You, the One who is one thing and who is all.

So may you give
To the intellect, wisdom to comprehend that one thing
To the heart, sincerity to receive this and this only
To the will, purity that wills only one thing
In prosperity, may you grant perseverance to will one thing
Amid distraction, collectedness to will one thing
In suffering, patience to will one thing.

You that gives both the beginning and the completion
May you early, at the dawn of the day,
Give to the young the resolution to will one thing
As the day wanes, may you give to the old
A renewed remembrance of that first resolution
That the first may be like the last
And the last like the first
In possession of a life that has willed only one thing,
To know God.