I submitted a proposal to a local publisher to publish a collection of my From the Bar Stool essays sometime last year. I was delightfully surprised when they replied with an offer.

After selecting, arranging and compiling the stories and essays for my inaugural creative publication, I completed the penultimate mile of my responsibilities – having my friend, Shan, write the Foreword, commissioning my talented friend, Nicholas Choong, to craft the book cover, revising the manuscript according to the editor’s suggested improvements and refinements, and writing the Preface and Afterword. Penultimate because I had one more round of revisions to go.

But it was at that penultimate stage – emailing the cover and the revised manuscript to the editor – I was struck hard and dumbfounded by a powerful, paralysing inertia. The heavy lifting was done. The digital files were attached to my draft email, ready for transmission. All I had left to do was press send.

That was it. This was the easiest part. Just press send. I send emails every day.

But I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it. I could do everything else but that. It was a very specific paralysis. It was frustrating as it was maddening. I didn’t know why my body resisted doing what my mind saw as easy, simple and straightforward. Press send.

Several times, I sat by the computer, staring at the typed-up email with attachments and the send button, hovering, circling, helicoptering around it, not landing. Avoiding. Other times, it felt like I had to climb Everest. I would do anything and everything but press the send button. It went on for weeks.

I didn’t understand it. Worse, the longer it dragged, the more embarrassed I became. Embarrassed because I told my family and close friends about it, so naturally they followed up. Have you completed it? Have you submitted the final draft? When is the launch date? How much is it selling for? Their innocent and well-intentioned queries shouldn’t have stung the way they did. But they did.

Embarrassed because, rationally, when I evaluated it, this resistance seemed thoroughly irrational. I mean, I wanted to be published. I have desired it for years. Saw it as recognition that I have written something worth publishing. But when the opportunity finally came, and I seemed to be paralysing it away. I had an acute appreciation of the proverb We are our own worst enemies.

One afternoon, I held myself down in front of the computer and bitch-slapped myself internally. Back-of-the-hand, leather-on-skin kind of slap. Wrestled myself from myself and commandeered myself to hit the send button. As all that happened, it felt like walking through quicksand. I felt like I had to force my left hand to grip and guide my extended right finger to press the send button. Each movement or action leading up to when I hit the send button was enervating, slow and heavy.

Though I finally overcame that moment, I was no wiser about what happened. I kept looking back to understand what happened. It bothered me.

How could I objectively view how absurdly I behaved yet feel subjectively powerless to stir myself to action for something I wanted? I didn’t behave that way when I wrote The Malaysian Guide to Advocacy. But to be fair, being behind my deadline removed any hesitation to submit my draft manuscript.

And then, I happened upon a book. Of course. Pure chance. Serendipity. I believe that for us reading sorts, the right book comes to us when we need it so long as we keep reading. But we have to be vigilant to their arrival. They travel incognito. They arrive quietly. They do not announce themselves. It gave me insight into what may have happened during my press-send-moment.

The book was Erling Kagge’s The Philosophy of an Explorer, 16 Life Lessons from Surviving the Extreme. I enjoyed Kagge’s earlier book, Silence, which was an eloquent, thoughtful essay about the book’s title. As an explorer, he spends long periods alone, in silence. Both are short, delightful reads and worth your while. I wasn’t reading it for anything specific. I was merely curious about his life and the lessons he wanted to impart from his experience.

When I read the former book, my attention was arrested by this passage by Kagge:

When I was fifteen I cycled from home in Oslo to Stromstad in Sweden to visit a girl I was in love with. It’s a journey of about ninety miles and it took me half the day. I was standing outside her house – I still remember the address: Tallstigen 4 – stretching, when it suddenly hit me that I might just as well go home. Not bother to ring the doorbell. I was surprised at my own reaction. She was no less gorgeous than when I’d decided to cycle to visit her, but now that I was finally within sight of my objective, I completely lost the desire to go any further. Not because I felt the road itself had been the most significant element, but because I simply didn’t dare to experience the next chapter. Since then I’ve encountered similar tendencies in people I have met: people who have been on the verge of attaining something, only to pull back. A friend finally got the job and salary he’d been striving for, and the opportunities for progression were great. But instead of going the full distance, he found he didn’t give a damn; he couldn’t or wouldn’t go on.

Erling Kagge’s The Philosophy of an Explorer, 16 Life Lessons from Surviving the Extreme, Penguin Paperback, pages 29 – 30

There was the condition I struggled with, the bewilderment I did not once give air to, eloquently articulated and analysed by a Norwegian explorer-author/publisher whose lifestyle, work and culture I know next to nothing about. Translated from Norwegian into English, of course. Despite seemingly wide differences, I, a Malaysian lawyer-essayist in the tropics, empathised with his outlook and resonated with him.

Despite our different extrinsic factors (lifestyle, culture, work), I find the same intrinsic experience (empathy, sharing similar thoughts and outlooks) he and I share to be deeply satisfying. We connect through empathy despite our differences and not speaking to each other.

After reading him, I better understood my baffling hesitation. There was fear, struggling with imposter syndrome, not daring to experience the next chapter, and imagining the worst. In that paralysing moment, I questioned whether what and how I wrote was worthy enough for publication. I imagined poor or indifferent reviews or sales, or worse, seeing my book bound with two books I wouldn’t be caught dead with in a three-for-one-ringgit special at the bottom of the bargain bin.

Even if Kagge’s gave me no further insight into that moment, it was enough that he experienced such a moment as I did. Reading him reassured me we are not alone in how we feel, no matter how personal, private, fleeting or ethereal and absurd as it may seem to us. It reaffirms the beauty of being human – we can go through a strikingly similar experience, share it, empathise and resonate, without having even met or spoken to each other. In our hyper-individualistic age, this is surprisingly easy to forget: we are unique but not that unique; we are not alone and if we are, we need not remain so.

Having read Kagge, I better understand myself. I understand better what went down during my press-send-moment. Reading him helped me feel better and harvest ideas about how to deal with the press-send-moments in the future. Because it will rear its head again. The confrontation of fear, imagined failure and loathing are recurring events, not enemies to be defeated once only and for all time.

Too often in Malaysia, I come across those who read only for work or education but not for leisure or pleasure. Some even find it surprising that I read after work. Aren’t you tired of reading? they ask. No. I am reading something that is not work-related. Something I want to read, not required to read. Big difference.

Not all reading should be confined to work and education.

There is much to be gained from reading to resonate.

Postscript: This is my subtle way of announcing I have publication coming. I thank those who suggested and supported the idea of putting a collection together for publication. It put the wind in my sails to do something about it. So, thank you again for the motivation! I will post updates whenever I am updated. Watch this space.