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TV Series Review: The English Game

written during Thanksgiving break

So last evening my family and I finished the first part of season 6 of The Crown. And I was just craving another period drama, and I remembered after finishing Ted Lasso, I looked up shows that were similar to it, and there was a list of shows and one of them was The English Game. This is one of the few TV shows or movies that I walked into without knowing anything about the plot or characters. I just remembered that Julian Fellowes, the creator of Downton Abbey, created this show and I was all for it, because Downton Abbey is one of my favorite shows.

The English Game takes place in the 19th century in London, and a team of football players named The Etonians are upper class and members of the Football Association. They have credentials, influence and, above all, money. However, there are a group of paper mill workers in the working class community of Darwen who also play football, and two players from Scotland, Fergus and Jimmy, arrive in England ready to play because the cotton mill owner, James, recruits them to play so the team can win the FA Cup. However, the Old Etonians are unwilling to let these people play because they are poor and the Etonians want only rich people to play. Arthur is the leader of the Etonians and he comes face to face with Fergus, who just wants a shot at accomplishing his dreams of being a footballer. One of the messages I learned about this miniseries is that perseverance is key if you want to follow your dreams, and if you really want to follow your dreams you have to push past the rejection, the humiliation, and the criticisms from others. Fergus learns how to not give up on himself even when the going gets rough, especially in one crucial scene where James and the Cotton Club members propose wage cuts for all the workers at the cotton mills. It also puts a strain on Fergus’s teammates when they find out that Fergus and Jimmy are the only footballers on the Darwen team who are being paid to play.

The show in some ways reminded me a lot of Ted Lasso. In a later season of Ted Lasso, one of the star players on the AFC Richmond team, Sam Obisanya, is almost recruited by Edwin Akufo, who is a multimillionaire who wants Sam to play on Nigeria’s team. He bribes Sam with all sorts of material wealthy things. He even has authentic Nigerian food catered to Sam. He wants to make money off of Sam, but Sam is loyal to AFC Richmond, so he turns down the offer. Edwin gets really upset and tears Sam down, but Sam is confident in himself so he isn’t swayed by Edwin’s insults. It reminded me of The English Game a little because Fergus needs to make a tough decision whether to join John Cartwright’s team, Blackburn, or stay with the Darwen team. Even though Cartwright promises him better benefits if he goes to their team, it puts a strain on his relationships with his Darwen teammates because not only are Jimmy and Fergus getting paid to play (they weren’t supposed to get paid to play football as a rule) but they go to the rival team. When Fergus and Jimmy go to the pub to hang out, their teammates get upset and tell them to leave since they betrayed them. But after Jimmy gets injured (just a warning, the scene where you see Jimmy’s injury is pretty graphic. I didn’t see it coming though because I didn’t read much about the show before watching it) his teammates began to have more sympathy for him, and gradually Fergus regains trust with his Darwen teammates when they realize that he wasn’t going to put on airs just because he went on the Blackburn team. It also reminded me of another moment in Ted Lasso, when Nathan Shelly, who was the kit-boy on AFC Richmond’s team, was recruited by Rebecca’s ex-husband, Rupert Mannion, to join the Manchester team. After a lot of self-actualization and realizing that Rupert is not a great guy to work with, he begs the AFC Richmond team to let him back on the team again. They let him back on, but they also let him know how egotistical he acted. I think Nathan realized that he really did love AFC Richmond and felt more at home there than he did on the Manchester team.

I love the romance between Fergus and Martha Almond, as well as the romance between Jimmy and Doris. When Fergus meets Martha she doesn’t warm up to him at first because she also has a young daughter she needs to protect and she doesn’t trust anyone to help her. However, as Fergus and Martha get to know each other, they develop a deep love for one another. Jimmy and Doris hit it off really well, and they get married. Fergus tells Jimmy to focus on football, but he is so overjoyed at getting married and Fergus realizes he wants Jimmy to be happy. Fergus also realizes he really loves Martha and wants to be more than friends, but we find out that Martha was in a relationship with Mr. Cartwright, the owner of the Blackburn team that Fergus is joining, and her daughter is technically Mr. Cartwright’s kid. Mr. Cartwright wants Martha to forgive him and still wants her to love him, but that also puts a strain on his marriage. Martha encourages Fergus to persevere and not give up on himself, and they develop an incredible bond together.

I also found a lot of similarities between the show and other stuff I have watched and read. There is a character named Alma, and she is married to Arthur, who runs the Etonian football team and is on the football association board. Alma suffers a miscarriage and it seems like she has nothing left to live for because she was really looking forward to becoming a mother, but then she goes to a women’s refuge called Brockshall, and she finds herself helping out Betsy, a young woman who works with Martha but got fired from her job. Betsy has her baby, but Mrs. Cartwright, who runs the refuge, gives the baby away to an adoption agency. Alma digs at her for this information, and after a lot of teeth pulling, Mrs. Cartwright finally gives her the book with the list of children given away for adoption. Alma does everything in her power to get Betsy’s baby back, and she goes to the adoption agency herself and takes the baby away. The woman at the agency fights her, but Alma’s husband, Arthur, stops the woman and lets Alma leave with Betsy’s baby so she can give her back to Betsy. It reminded me of this movie I watched a while ago called True Mothers, a Japanese language film about a couple who adopt a child after being unable to conceive, and their later confrontation with the young mother who wants her son back from the couple. Like in The English Game, the women whose babies are taken to the agency are mostly born out of wedlock or from unwanted pregnancies, and during the 19th century there was a lot of shame and judgment associated with a woman being pregnant if she was unmarried. It reminded me, too, of the judgment Ethel encountered in the show Downton Abbey. Ethel meets a soldier named Charles Bryant when he is staying at Downton during the war, and she becomes pregnant with his child. She faces a lot of shame and stigma for having a child out of wedlock and she has to give up the child to Charles’ parents, who do not respect her.

What this movie showed me was the spirit to persevere is so important. Fergus faced a lot of challenges when competing against Arthur and the other Etonians. He and his team didn’t have as much status or wealth as they did, and they also faced financial challenges and unemployment. However, Fergus had to overcome his own self-doubt and fears in order to help lead the team to victory. He also learned that it’s okay to accept help from others, and that even though he faced a lot of painful moments in his past (his father is an alcoholic who abuses his mom and sisters) he overcame each hurdle after another. Arthur also realized that he wanted to make football accessible to everyone, not just the wealthy. I think helping Alma get Betsy her baby back may have given him a sense of purpose outside of his work or what his father expected of him. Arthur’s dad set a lot of expectations for his son, and became disappointed when he didn’t meet those expectations, but Arthur realized through working together with Fergus that football really did bring him happiness and wasn’t just something he did just to make himself look good for others.

This was overall a really good show. And the music was absolutely amazing. I found myself listening to the Downton Abbey soundtrack quite a lot these past few weeks. It just has so much incredible music and it is absolutely beautiful. Just like Downton Abbey, The English Game has amazing music as well. The music kind of reminded me of The Crown‘s music score because it sounded intense and had a somber tone, which I think was appropriate considering it was a drama. I didn’t know most of the actors in The English Game, I only knew a couple of the actors, and one was Daniel Ings because he played Prince Philip’s secretary Mike in seasons 1 and 2 of The Crown. At first it was hard to recognize him because Mike doesn’t wear a beard in The Crown, but he does when he plays the role of Francis Marindin, who was on the football board and on the Eton team in The English Game. Another actor I recognized was Kate Phillips, the actress who played Venetia Scott, Winston Churchill’s secretary, in season 1 of The Crown. She played Laura Lyttelton, the wife of one of Arthur’s close friends, and she is also Alma’s friend.

The Crown part 1 season 6 (contains spoilers)

I had really been anticipating season 6 of The Crown, a really good show on Netflix I am watching right now. To be honest, this season was pretty sad. But I think watching it kind of helped me process my own grief this week after my mentor, Daisaku Ikeda, passed away this past week. Daisaku Ikeda’s encouragement really touched my life, and he was a peacebuilder and writer whose works really encouraged me, so this week after finding out he died was very painful. This first part of The Crown deals with grief and the aftermath of Princess Diana’s death, and so watching this helped me to process my own grief. I felt a lot less like I was going through this alone, and watching these episodes reminded me that grief is a universal experience and it is indeed painful to go through for everyone.

I feel bad for putting spoilers in this post but at the same time, I understand that Princess Diana’s death was very real and very painful for everyone, and while I would learn about her in history or world geography class, seeing Elizabeth Debicki embody Diana’s character so well really made me feel as if I was meeting Diana. Elizabeth is an incredible actress and I really loved her in Widows, and she is also an excellent actress in The Crown. I think when everyone was grieving Diana’s death, I think it was really sad to watch, and it showed how Diana really touched everyone’s lives, even her ex-husband, Charles. And it was also painful to watch Dodi Fayed’s father grieving because that was his only child and even though he set these high expectations for Dodi and got really disappointed when Dodi didn’t meet his expectations, he still loved his son. It was really powerful when they showed Charles imagining a dialogue between him and Diana, and then Dodi’s dad imagining him talking with Dodi. Dodi in the imagined conversation tells his dad that he failed him so many times and didn’t meet his expectations. Dodi’s father wanted Dodi to get married to Diana but it was really driven by his pursuit of wanting to become a British citizen. In the earlier episodes of season 5, Dodi’s father, as a child, encounters the abdicated Edward and his wife, Wallis Simpson, and he aspires to be British. However, he has incredibly high expectations for his son to do what he tells him to do, and Dodi is always trying to seek approval from his father. I think that is why he hangs up on his dad before telling him that he and Diana didn’t actually seal the deal on getting married because he feared his father’s disapproval. If Dodi actually told his father that Diana didn’t want to marry him, then Dodi’s father would cut him off from his fortune and basically disown his son. The imagined conversation between Dodi and his father really showed how the father regretted making his son feel poorly about himself, like he failed his father. It seems that approval seeking is a huge pattern in a lot of these relationships depicted in the show. Prince Charles wants his mom’s approval and when he speaks out for the self-determination of the people of Wales, she reprimands him for doing so. When he says he was just expressing an opinion, she shuts him down and tells him no one wants to hear his opinion. Of course, I’m sure the backstory of all this was much more complex, but as someone who has spent most of my life wanting to seek approval and reading more books about it and learning how to work on not seeking validation all the time (which is still a work in progress) it was pretty painful to see how most of the characters’ lives were based on seeking external validation. But of course, I have to remember that the royal family probably didn’t have a choice because they were in the public eye all of the time.

I think watching the scene with all the paparazzi chasing Diana was pretty sad, too. I used to think it was so glamorous to see celebrities’ photos of them taking their kids to school, eating ice cream, kissing their partners. It all seemed like these actors, musicians and other famous people were these gods or deities. I think as I grew older and started seeing more clearly what Hollywood is really like, though, I have learned that celebrities are human beings just like me. And it’s pretty stressful for a lot of them to be going about their daily lives and have someone take a photo of them and splash it all over the papers. When I went to Los Angeles, I thought, I’m going to meet all these celebrities and it’s going to be so cool! But I didn’t, and I think after reflecting on it, it was best to just let these regular ass people live their regular ass lives. I think that is why while watching the show it was so emotionally painful to see Diana being chased by the people taking the photos. They just wouldn’t give her a break, and even when Dodi and her went to get ice cream, people hounded them for photos, so much so that they had to hide in a jewelry store. Even when they go in the restaurant they set up a reservation to dine at, the people around them just stare at them and they can’t just eat in private. Diana breaks down crying because it is really stressful that she just can’t enjoy her meal with Dodi without people following her and asking her personal questions.

And it was really profound when she told Dodi that motherhood brought her the greatest joy, and it’s why I felt really sad when she died because from watching the show it was clear that she really loved her sons and they also did everything they could to make sure their mom was happy and enjoying her life even when she was dealing with these really toxic dynamics in the royal family and not having her privacy respected. In this season she goes to Bosnia to support a charity that raises awareness of landmines and how the victims of landmine explosions often go unnoticed. In the earlier seasons I saw Diana supporting many charities and organizations, and she also treated people with the utmost respect. I think that is why watching the footage that shows the thousands of flower bouquets that people dedicated to Diana really hit like a gut punch because it showed me how Diana truly touched many people’s lives. She actually wanted to go out there and be with the people.

My Love of Reading

As a kid my mom took me to the library a lot growing up. I have always enjoyed libraries since I was young. The feel of a physical book, the smell of those crisp pages, the way the sentences formed in curls of black ink on the pages. Reading was a magical experience for me growing up, and books have always been great companions. There is a really awesome chapter in this book I love called Discussions on Youth by Daisaku Ikeda and in this chapter he talks about developing a love of reading in his youth and why it’s so important to get into the habit of reading. In high school I remember reading a lot especially. It was just so awesome to just go home and just read my book. I took a world geography class and I decided to read more literatures by writers from around the world, such as Isabel Allende, Giles Foden, and many other authors. Reading these books exposed me to so many new worlds and new ways of thinking, and experiences. It helped me find solace when I felt so lost and uncertain in the ups and downs of society. I think that’s why I have fond memories of ninth grade because I read books all the time and it was just so relaxing. I remember I had a friend from middle school who loved to read just as much as I did, and we would have our conversations but then we would sit afterwards and read our books in silence. It was very peaceful much of the time. In sophomore year, I started to somehow become ashamed of my love of books. I thought it was the reason I didn’t have any friends, but looking back, 30 year old me would have just said, “Look, it’s high school, it’s hormones. Not every scowl you encounter in the hallway is about you or the purple jeans and the Murkmere book you were carrying with you down the hall.” And to be honest, I had fellow friends who loved reading like me. I had one friend who loved Twilight and she and I would bond over Twilight together, and I went over to her birthday party and everyone was just as much a nerd as I was, and we watched New Moon and ate puppy chow together on her couch and made all sorts of commentaries throughout the movie. I always enjoy reading the book before seeing the movie, because then you can compare how well the movie stayed true to the book. I remember not being a fan of the film adaptation of The Nanny Diaries for some reason. I think just because the ending was different in the movie from the book. Mrs. X wasn’t nice even well at the end of the book, but in the movie she becomes a nice person to the nanny.

When I was younger one of my favorite memories was going to the bookstore and ordering hot chocolate with whipped cream and marshmallows and chilling out in the kids section with a book. It was a magical experience and I love holiday breaks because then I get to read a lot. In college, winter and summer breaks were something I looked forward to a lot because I got to read for fun, which I didn’t have much time to do during the school year because I was juggling extracurriculars on top of studying and adjusting to a new environment. I remember devouring books like The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, books about Buddhism, and so many other books. The summer before ninth grade, I remember reading a few books. I don’t know how I was able to squeeze in so much time to read because I spent about eighty percent of my summer watching MTV, knitting and eating waffles. When I was working at Starbucks, I always looked forward to my lunch breaks because then I could read for fun. I remember one of the books I read was called The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon, and I think after that I became hooked on his writing. So then I went and read The Yiddish Policeman’s Union because I think I saw my math teacher was reading it one time, and I got curious about it, and later on Telegraph Avenue and Moonglow. I think in general reading is one of those activities I need to slow down and not rush through, because I have rushed through books before but then I forget the plot. If you asked me, Can you remember the plot of this book or that book that I read in high school, I wouldn’t be able to tell you because most of those books I read quickly, so I often forgot the plot. I think it was hard especially to rush through any of Michael Chabon’s books because not only is his writing good, but also he uses a lot of big words, so I had to often write down on a piece of paper the vocabulary words I wanted to look up as I read the book. Spoiler alert: every time I did this–write down all the vocabulary words and then finally look them up–I almost never looked up the words. Or maybe looked up a handful. But I would always end up throwing the list of words I needed to look up in the trash because I was just collecting little strips of paper at that point, and it was starting to clutter my living space.

I remember taking a class in my junior year called Literatures of the African Diaspora, and I would just rush through the books we were reading: NW by Zadie Smith, Open City by Teju Cole, Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The only book I can vividly remember I didn’t speed through was Small Island by Andrea Levy. If you haven’t read it, it is a must. While I haven’t watched the entire series, the little clip I did see was really good. It takes place in England during World War II, and it is about Jamaican immigrants navigating life in England. Hortense and Gilbert are a Jamaican couple navigating life in England and living in a racist society. Queenie is waiting until her husband comes back from war, and while he is away she falls in love with a Jamaican serviceman and has a child with him. Her relationship with Hortense and Gilbert is complicated, and even though she seems to be supportive of Black people she is really not that progressive and still looks down on and treats Hortense especially very poorly. I remember developing so much ire towards Queenie throughout the novel, and it got to the point where during my presentation on the book I just wouldn’t shut up about how much I loathed Queenie’s character. My poor classmates, bless their hearts, listened calmly to my rants. I love them forever. I still have yet to read NW to be honest. I seriously thought I had read it but I was confusing it with another book she wrote called On Beauty. This time when I read NW, I am not going to speed through it. I am going to savor every word, every plot point, every character’s struggle. I am going to fully immerse myself in the book, not just speed through it like I did when I took that class. I mean, I know I was pressed for time and had other assignments, but I could have at least given myself the pleasure of enjoying the book rather than feeling like I had to mark up every little sentence, every little plot point, every little syntax and detail. I remember during my senior year of high school this girl I sat with always bugged me about making too many annotations in the books I was reading for fun. I wanted to tackle the classics, so I read Jane Eyre and other books. I would dissect each book as if it was a frog during science class, and to be honest reading had become something I wasn’t doing for fun but rather to impress my peers with “Look at how many Bic highlighters I can wear out while reading this 400 page tome.” This well-meaning girl told me to first read the book and then mark it up later. To be honest, this was great advice. I absorbed a lot more when I wasn’t so busy critiquing every little thing that Charlotte Bronte was trying to get at with Jane’s character. Of course, taking notes is helpful, especially if you read a big ass book like War and Peace. Now that’s a freaking tome right there. But I’m learning that it’s also okay to just read the book. I will say, though, I still have a pocket dictionary to look up those big words and I still find it helpful.

A list of values and what they mean to me

  • Acceptance: it’s important to accept yourself because then you can accept others. Everyone, including me, has strengths and weaknesses and living true to myself means accepting my strengths and weaknesses and working to get better each day.
  • Altruism: giving to others feels good because I’m helping brighten someone else’s day
  • Autonomy: it’s important to ask for help but I’m learning, too, that it helps to do things by yourself, too.
  • Balance: you don’t want to have a life that is completely all work and no play or all play and no work. I’m learning to take care of myself when I get stressed, like exercising, eating well, spending time with family and friends and doing hobbies like reading and knitting. I think maintaining my hobbies and interests is helping me balance out a lot of stress I feel at work.
  • Challenge: challenges hep me grow. It’s hard sometimes to believe because sometimes I think if things were easy I would be fine but then without challenges I couldn’t grow and become resilient.
  • Community: I can’t do everything by myself. It’s nice to have a group of people you can feel comfortable being around. I think joining extracurriculars and volunteering has helped me find a sense of purpose.
  • Compassion: it’s important to understand what others go through because I think that’s how we create connection. I have learned that it’s important to check in on friends and family to see how they are once in a while. It’s taken me out of getting caught up in my own problems.
  • Connection: John Donne said it best. “No man is an island.” I’m an introvert so I do enjoy spending time alone but like any human being I need to connect and interact with others.
  • Consistency: when working on my goals, consistency is important because if I quit after a week of working on something, I can’t see results. I’m working on still writing the book, blogging, chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo and exercising every day. Just putting on a calendar each day that I need to do these things is helping me stay motivated. There are days when I miss exercise or don’t feel like writing, many days. But when I finally do the action I want to take towards my goal, I feel good about the little progress I am making each day.
  • Contribution: I want to give something to people that brings them hope in some way.
  • Cooperation: I’ve learned that anywhere I’m with people I need to work well with them. I often let my ego or emotions get in the way and it’s still a work in progress but through practice I have learned to get along with others on projects and other things.
  • Courage: I chant Nam myoho renge kyo everyday for courage because it’s not easy to do things you are uncomfortable with but in order to go for those big dreams I need to push past my fears of not being good enough to take action to write that book, practice my cello or even go up and talk to people.
  • Courtesy: I am not perfect, I admit, and I sometimes forget to use my manners, but it’s important to respect people, especially at work. I need to be better at respectfully addressing people, whether my coworkers or people on the phone.
  • Creativity: this is a big value for me because creativity is how I express my joys and sufferings, the entirety of the human condition. Whether I am writing, playing my cello or listening to music, it stimulates my brain and in general helps me destress. I don’t know where I would be without some sort of creative outlet to keep me busy. It’s really helped me get through my ups and downs, especially during my depressive episodes.
  • Dependability: I’ve learned that it’s important to show up on time to things and look nice at work because when you make those efforts, people come to trust you. Building trust takes times, and it starts with my behavior. I haven’t always been the most dependable to be honest, but I am again working on it.
  • Dignity: I practice a philosophy that believes in respect for the dignity of each person’s life. When I practice this, it helps me see the inherent value of my own life. Too many people’s lives are trampled on and disrespected in society.
  • Encouragement: Encouragement motivates me to do my best and giving others encouragement helps me stay motivated, too. I always love reading Buddhist study materials like The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin and Daisaku Ikeda’s writings because Daisaku Ikeda encourages me to not give up on my dreams, to do my best and to live true to myself. Every time I feel stuck, I read these writings to remind myself that I have to keep pushing through.
  • Equality: A lot of human rights aren’t respected or acknowledged in society. I think that’s why equality is important. I think I started to think about the inequalities in society more around the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd, and I am still thinking about how to address inequality in society. I think it can take many forms–donating to organizations that support racial and economic justice, writing to the people in government positions, or even writing poetry about injustice. I remember writing a poem in the wake of Breonna Taylor’s death because it really shook me, and even as a quiet person who didn’t know what to do, writing this poem was my small contribution to the racial justice movement. Of course, I can always do more to fight inequality, but I’ve learned that even just educating myself on justice and equality and learning from others’ experiences is a step in becoming more aware and inspiring me to take further action.
  • Ethics: It’s important for me to be aware of whether I am behaving ethically or not, because then I can reflect on whether my actions help or harm others. I remember studying about ethics as a philosophy major in college, but to actually put it into practice is harder because it requires you to reflect on your own behavior and what you can do better.
  • Faith: belief in some sort of cause is important for me to keep going in an uncertain and chaotic world. I practice Buddhism with an organization of other Buddhist practitioners, and we chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo and study Buddhist concepts together and discuss how we apply them to our daily lives. Having faith in Buddhism has kept me grounded when I felt my purpose in life was lost. I’m learning how to also be more open to having more dialogues with people of other faith organizations as well, because sometimes I can only get focused on my own beliefs, but I think learning from others and listening to their perspectives, whether I agree with them or not, is a step in finding common ground with others. In Buddhism faith means believing in our unlimited potential. It’s challenging to believe in this every day, but that’s why I try to chant and study as much as I can so that no matter what challenges I go through, I have a steady compass to navigate those stormy times. By developing my faith in Buddhism, I have grown much stronger and have been able to create profound meaning from my challenges. Like these past couple years I had a very strong crush on someone, and I was really consumed by these feelings, and it was painful because I just couldn’t face the reality that he was with someone else. But I think through practicing Buddhism, I became much stronger and was able to create value from going through this painful challenge. It wasn’t easy at all, and there were times I fell into despair. But I think practicing Buddhism also helped me see clearly how this crush wasn’t super healthy and that I was making this guy the center of my entire life. Had I not gone through this challenge, though, I would not have deepened my faith. I would not have known how worthy I am deep down even if I don’t always feel worthy. Developing my faith over these past few years has helped me develop immense self love, and it is still a process to develop that self-love but I always have my faith to keep me from getting easily swayed.
  • Family: I love spending time with my parents and I love to stay in touch with my other family members even if I cannot physically be there for them. I am still not sure if I want kids or a husband yet, but I’m glad for the time being I can at least live together with my parents. We spend time together and it’s nice. I want to enjoy it while I can.
  • Freedom: It is something I have come to appreciate over the years. I can practice my religion freely, I can leave my house. I live comfortably, I live in a place where there is access to restaurants, grocery stores, movie theaters, and if I don’t want to go to the theater I can stream my movie online. The list of freedoms I have are endless, but with freedom requires taking responsibility for my life. I have learned I can’t just live carelessly. I am responsible for my actions and behaviors. It took me a long time to realize this, to be honest. But I have been thinking about what I take for granted all the time, and freedom is one of these things. Many people can’t practice their religion freely, many people don’t live in places where they have easy convenient access to grocery stores and restaurants, many people can’t marry who they want. I never used to think about freedom a lot but it’s something I cannot take for granted because it can easily be taken away any day.
  • Friendship: As someone who isn’t in a romantic relationship or marriage I have been relying on friendships a lot. My friendships are constantly evolving over time though, and I have learned that friendships change and people move on, but you never actually forget the impact that the person had on your life, even if the friendship didn’t last forever. Staying in touch with even just a few friends has been important to my well being. Most of my friends live far away but staying in touch with them is something I am working on doing more of. It can be challenging because I don’t use Facebook but I love writing letters and emails and making phone calls. People in my Buddhist community have also been great friends because we are working together to encourage each other in our personal goals and for world peace.
  • Fulfillment: it’s nice to have a sense of meaning, that what you do each day creates some sort of good value. Doing my Buddhist center activities gives me a sense of fulfillment because it gives me a larger purpose in life. Setting goals and determinations has also brought me fulfillment, whether it is praying each day, exercising, knitting or reading. I have lately been thinking about what my purpose in the world is, and have also been contemplating what work I find fulfilling.
  • Fun: It’s important to have fun because without fun I would get stressed all the time. In college I thought I wasn’t supposed to have fun and I got stressed all the time. My fellow students always had to remind me to make time in my schedule to do activities I loved. Looking back, though, I need to cut myself some slack (at least a teaspoon of slack if not the entire tablespoon of salt). I did do things for fun. I wrote in my journal, I did Buddhist activities, I read for fun during my winter and summer breaks, and I watched movies with my friends. I completely have them to thank for always texting me to meet up even when I kept making the excuse, “I’m busy, I’m busy.” We still managed to squeeze a few nights out at the local Indian restaurant for some delicious biryani.

How I manage my screen time

I saw this as the WordPress daily prompt, and it immediately resonated with me. Managing my screen time is something I have been challenging for a while, even before I got my first smart phone in 2016. Even before I got a smartphone I was always spending time on YouTube, and while it provided a respite from loneliness I felt in school, it cut into a lot of my sleep time and study time. I haven’t learned to manage my computer time yet, but I’m starting with monitoring how much time I spend on my cell phone. I use the Digital Well Being app on my phone to mark how much time I have spent and it also categorizes the time I spent on different apps, such as YouTube, text messages and email. I usually write down how much screen time I spend each day, and while it’s still a work in progress for me to not just grab my cell phone and scroll the news or YouTube, being aware of how I am using my phone and for how much is a small step that I’m taking to make sure I do other activities outside of looking at my phone all day. Although I do use YouTube to watch movies and exercise because there are a lot of great exercise videos. I also listen to music on YouTube. I can’t completely cut myself off the grid right now, that would be pretty tough. I tried in college. I cut my phone off pretty frequently and my family couldn’t reach me no matter how many times they called. I am slowly learning how to communicate better and more frequently. It is still a work in progress though. I think keeping track of my phone use has been beneficial. I think I started doing it more after reading How to Break Up with Your Phone by Catherine Price and listening to Catherine Price do a podcast episode with Vivek Murthy about phone use.

Music Playlist for the Week

  • Leave Me Alone: Michael Jackson
  • Leave Before You Love Me: Marshmello and Jonas Brothers
  • What’s It Gonna Be?- Janet Jackson and Busta Rhymes
  • Stranger in Moscow: Michael Jackson
  • Trouble: Iggy Azalea and Jennifer Hudson
  • Beautiful: Snoop Dogg and Pharrell
  • Ballin’: Snoop Dogg and The Dramatics
  • I’m a Slave 4 U: Britney Spears
  • Just Friends: Musiq Soulchild
  • When We Get By: D’Angelo
  • Son of a Gun (I Betcha Think This Song is About You): Janet Jackson
  • Love from the Other Side: Fall Out Boy
  • I Am Here: P!nk
  • Drink You Away: Justin Timberlake
  • Really Don’t Care: Demi Lovato and Cher Lloyd
  • Through the Dark: KT Tunstall
  • Longview: Green Day
  • Issues (Hold On): Teyana Taylor
  • Beautiful: Tweet
  • Talkin’ To Me: Amerie
  • Jojo: Boz Scaggs
  • That Don’t Impress Me Much (Dance Mix): Shania Twain
  • My Vision: Seal
  • Colour: Seal
  • Under the Weather: KT Tunstall
  • Human Beings: Seal
  • Princess of China: Coldplay
  • Na Na: Trey Songz
  • Trouble: P!nk
  • Southern Nights: Glen Campbell
  • Flashing Lights: Ye (Kanye West)
  • Think: The Blues Brothers, Aretha Franklin
  • Love Can Move Mountains: Celine Dion
  • Team: LORDE
  • Are You Gonna Be My Girl?- Jet
  • A Woman’s Worth: Alicia Keys
  • Ring (feat. Kehlani): Cardi B
  • Take a Walk: Raphael Saadiq
  • I Believe to My Soul: Donny Hathaway
  • Here You Come Again: Dolly Parton
  • Centuries: Fall Out Boy
  • High Hopes: Panic! At the Disco
  • Swearin’ To God: Frankie Valli
  • Stubborn Kind of Fellow: Marvin Gaye
  • Club at the End of the Street: Elton John
  • Get Involved: Raphael Saadiq and Q Tip
  • Head: Prince

Movie Review: Waltz with Bashir

Honestly I was ambivalent about watching this movie because I tend to get really squeamish about violence, and I was already watching a lot of images in the news with the Israel-Palestine conflict, so I thought about not seeing it. I spent the last few days looking at parent’s guides for info about any potential violence, language and sex. But to be honest, I am at that age where I know which movies I can tolerate and which I cannot. I will never sit through Five Nights at Freddy’s, but I was willing to watch this because I didn’t know much about the 1982 Lebanon War. I mean, I’m sure I studied about it in my geography and world history classes in high school, but that was a long time ago and because history is constantly repeating itself, I need to study it again and again to understand why the present is happening the way it is. But I think watching movies can also be a tool to understand historical issues from different perspectives, and while I am still processing the entirety of the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, watching this film showed me that war is horrific and traumatic for everyone involved.

To be honest, I am not a history expert. I only know about Israel and Palestine from high school and from reading the news, so I at first wasn’t sure if I was even qualified to write this movie review because I still have so much to learn about and I am not well researched about the 1982 Lebanon War. But I will do my best. I am still processing this film though because it was very intense and emotional. I think if I had watched this movie when I was younger I don’t know if I would have been able to handle it, to be honest. But for some reason I was okay with watching this movie at night even though I know deep down that I normally try not to watch upsetting content at night. But that’s the thing about movies. They are not always there to make me comfortable or entertain. Oftentimes movies challenge me to look at history from a different perspective. Also, I’m biased about Rotten Tomatoes reviews, and this film got a 97 percent so I thought, It must have been good. I remember watching the Oscars when I was in middle school, and this movie had been nominated for Best Foreign Language Film.

The film was directed by Ari Folman, and the animation was what pretty much drew me to it in the first place. It is masterfully done, and it was a reminder of how animation can serve as powerful social commentary. It reminded me of when I watched the film and read the graphic novel Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, which illustrates Marjane’s coming of age during the Iranian Revolution. Or the graphic novel Maus by Art Spiegelman, which moved me on so many levels. Honestly this movie reminded me how so much is lost in war. It’s easy for me to soak up the air with my own problems and worries, and of course problems and worries make us human. But when I looked at the news and saw Gaza and so many Palestinian and Israeli citizens suffering, it was hard to look away but also I felt hopeless just looking at those images. When I watched this movie it reminded me that compared to war and bombings that take many people’s lives, my own petty problems are so small. It reminded me that I have to appreciate my life even if I’m not getting everything I want. Because war destroys people’s lives. The movie showed that while Ari created many friendships and connections with people while in the war, every day was a life or death battle for everyone in this war and no one was guaranteed an extra day because any time they were walking down the street someone could get killed. The movie shows how traumatic war is and how it can bring up a lot of painful feelings and experiences. In one scene there is a therapist who talks about disassociation as a defense mechanism, how when people are going through a traumatic experience they often detach themselves from the experience even though they are in the flesh living through a traumatic event. Trauma also impacts how people remember different experiences. One memorable one where he and two other naked men are wading in the water and before them they are watching a city being bombed. They walk towards the light and put their clothes on. They are in survival mode and like I said, when it comes to war it is a life or death battle where you don’t know whether you are guaranteed another day or not because someone could easily take away your life from you. The ending was pretty difficult to watch, especially because it was real imagery from the Lebanon war of actually murdered Palestinians during the massacre.

The movie reminded me of a quote from a book I am reading called The Human Revolution by an author named Daisaku Ikeda, and he recounts his experiences growing up during World War II and how during the aftermath of the war everyone in Japan was struggling to rebuild and regain hope because so many people lost their loved ones and possessions in the war. He opens the book with a short yet profound quote: “Nothing is more barbarous than war. Nothing is more cruel.” Honestly as I was watching Waltz with Bashir, that quote was at the forefront of my mind. It was also a quote I reflected on a lot while watching movies about war in the past, such as 1917. In 1917, these two men fighting in World War I endure harrowing events at pretty much every turn. They go through no man’s land and they are literally in a life or death battle. Even when they are walking through a beautiful field of flowers, they don’t have time to enjoy it because they are living through the trauma of war and the reality that they could get killed at any moment. There is one scene that stuck with me when the two soldiers are walking through an beautiful field of flowers, and they talk about receiving a medal for their service. They conclude that getting a medal would mean nothing because they faced so many cruel realities while in battle and it left them feeling disillusioned and hopeless.

I’m still emotionally processing Waltz with Bashir so I don’t know what else to say, but overall it was a really deep film.

Waltz with Bashir. 2008. Directed by Ari Folman. Rated R for some disturbing images of atrocities, strong violence, brief nudity and a scene of graphic sexual content.

Favorite form of exercise

Lately I’ve been realizing that exercise does wonders for my body. I tend to sit a lot so I’ve been trying to become more active. I love Yoga with Adriene because she has a lot of great videos, and I also love Grow with Jo because her videos are fun. It’s a tie between cardio and yoga, to be honest. I enjoy both.

Book List

This is a list of some books I have read.

  1. Confessions of a Shopaholic: Sophie Kinsella
  2. Speak: Laurie Halse Anderson
  3. Miracle at St. Anna: James McBride
  4. Bad Feminist: Roxane Gay
  5. The Book of Delights: Ross Gay
  6. The Other Americans: Leila Lalami
  7. Me, Earl and the Dying Girl: Jesse Andrews
  8. The Nanny Diaries: Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Krauss
  9. The Harry Potter series
  10. Native Son: Richard Wright
  11. Black Boy: Richard Wright
  12. The Fire Next Time: James Baldwin
  13. The Fire This Time: Jesmyn Ward
  14. The Last King of Scotland: Giles Foden
  15. Tess of the D’Urbervilles: Thomas Hardy
  16. Germinal: Emile Zola
  17. I Have the Right To: Chessy Prout and Jenn Abelson
  18. The Life Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck: Sarah Knight
  19. Americanah: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  20. Into the Woods: Tana French
  21. The Book of Form and Emptiness: Ruth Ozeki
  22. You Do You: Sarah Knight
  23. Get Your Sh*t Together: Sarah Knight
  24. Originals: Adam Grant
  25. Big Magic: Elizabeth Gilbert
  26. The Septembers of Shiraz: Dalia Sofer
  27. Midnight’s Children: Salman Rushdie
  28. Everything is Illuminated: Jonathan Safran Foer
  29. Discussions on Youth: Daisaku Ikeda
  30. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: Stieg Larsson
  31. The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo: Amy Schumer
  32. Yes Please: Amy Poehler
  33. Bossypants: Tina Fey
  34. So Close to Being the Sh*t, Y’all Don’t Even Know: Retta
  35. Please Don’t Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes: Essays: Phoebe Robinson
  36. It Could Be Worse, You Could Be Me: Ariel Levy
  37. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking: Susan Cain
  38. Daring Greatly: Brene Brown
  39. Atlas of the Heart: Brene Brown
  40. A Fine Balance: Rohinton Mistry
  41. Swing Time: Zadie Smith
  42. Caucasia: Danzy Senna
  43. Caramelo: Sandra Cisneros
  44. Rose Gold: Walter Mosley
  45. Pageboy: Elliot Page
  46. About a Boy: Nick Hornby
  47. Trainspotting: Irvine Welsh
  48. Atonement: Ian McEwan
  49. The Little Friend: Donna Tartt
  50. Gone Girl: Gillian Flynn

It’s been a week (or a couple)

These past couple of weeks have been challenging. I have definitely had to go in my car and chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo quite a few times. Every time I read the news I just get more and more anxious. It’s a habit I am trying to break. I try to go on the news to be more informed, but I end up feeling more anxious. Maybe it’s just a lot of information to take in. I am chanting for world peace. That is one of the best actions I can take.

Wishing all love and peace.