In the relentless, humid hum of Singapore, a city-state that rewards frantic motion and punishes pause, I had become a master of the urgent.
At nearly fifty, my life was a carefully constructed edifice of full Google calendars and anxieties. I navigated the currents of a high-stakes career with the weary expertise of a long-distance swimmer, convinced the only way forward was to never stop kicking.
My free hours were spent on the mats, trading the day’s stress for the controlled chaos of jiujitsu training, trying to grapple my anxieties into submission through leverage and pressure.
Then, a year ago, a small, ginger philosopher named Hobbes wandered into our lives, and my world began to quietly unravel, only to be re-woven into something far more resilient.
Hobbes was a creature of the streets, a scruffy stray of about two, his fiery orange coat a testament to a past lived under the tropical sun.
We took him in, believing we were the ones offering sanctuary. I could not have been more wrong. As I grappled with a series of tempests that left me feeling adrift, Hobbes became my unwitting mentor in the forgotten arts of patience, indifference, and a kind of profound, minimalist clarity that no amount of rolling on the mats could provide.
My world is governed by externalities, market fluctuations, corporate restructuring, the ever-shifting expectations of others. My stress was a frantic attempt to control the uncontrollable. When training BJJ, I could impose a framework of rules and techniques onto this feeling; in life, it was just noise.
Hobbes, however, operates under a different, more ancient constitution. He practices a form of radical indifference that would make Marcus Aurelius or Seneca proud. The shriek of a passing ambulance on the AYE, a slammed door during windy nights, the torrent of bad news from our living room TV, these events register, but they do not disturb his peace.
His concern is his immediate jurisdiction: the patch of sunlight warming his ginger fur, the fullness and freshness of his food bowl, the warmth of his favourite sleeping spot. He doesn’t waste energy on what lies beyond his influence.
Watching him, I saw how much of my own exhaustion stemmed from wrestling with phantoms.
Then there is his patience.
In jiujitsu, patience is strategic; a tense waiting for my training partner to make a mistake, an opening to exploit. It is an active, coiled stillness.
Hobbes’s patience is something else entirely. When he wants something, he simply arrives, settles, and waits. His presence is a quiet, unwavering declaration of intent, a shock of orange against the cool floor. He has a singular goal and understands the most effective path to it is not frantic effort but sustained, focused being. He knows precisely what he wants – and he gets it, usually.
How many of us can say the same?
Hobbes taught me that true power lies not in the breadth of one’s pursuits, but in the focused depth of one’s attention.
Perhaps his most profound lesson, though, is in the simple act of being. I would find him sitting on the windowsill, utterly and completely present, absorbed in the texture of the moment.
He was not ruminating on yesterday’s missed flying bug or worrying about tomorrow. It was mindfulness embodied, a living refutation of my own mind’s tendency to ricochet between regret and anxiety. He was teaching me that this very breath is the only place where life is actually lived.
This small, unassuming creature, a refugee from the chaos of the streets, has become my guide. In his quiet composure, Hobbes showed me that while jiujitsu could help me manage the physical symptoms of stress, true strength isn’t about controlling the storm outside, but about finding the unshakable center within. He taught me to be indifferent to what I cannot change, patient in my pursuits, and to find sanctuary not in future success, but in the simple, profound stillness of now.
He is just a cat, but in the high-stress theatre at this point of my life, this little ginger guru has been my wisest teacher.
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