I probably say this often but the last few weeks have been a strange and quirky twilight zone for me.
One day I am camping in “the middle of nowhere”, a town of less than 900 people — no signal, no electricity, basic food, a tent with a yoga mat as a bed. Entertainment in the form of hiking, board games, staring into space + the bright stars and sleeping unusually early. Then a few days later I’m in NYC, loud, sizzling, crowded, restaurants everywhere, all the complexity and advantages of technology right at my fingertips, endless entertainment, people and billboard watching in the city that never sleeps.
One day I learn of a good friend’s passing while celebrating one of my best friend’s birthday.
Some days I remember to go on social media and often I would see birthday greetings right before seeing posts about recent deaths.
I turn my laptop on and feel this unsettling amount of work that feels unending. I shut my laptop off and feel all that work float and hover carelessly in space.
I hangout with family/ friends and I cherish this social freedom + energy that makes me feel loved and part of something bigger. I hangout alone and cherish (what feels like a) necessary isolation that keeps me grounded + disconnects me from the fast-paced, often overwhelming world we’ve all created.
I flip-flop between this sense of urgency (“everything is important and now!”) and this sense of indifference (“nothing is *that* important, everything is okay now”).
I swim in this current where I feel high energy (“I can do anything and I want to do everything!”) to mid energy (“I can probably do a lot but I try not to do too much”) to low energy (“I can do nothing, I want to do nothing … but I’ll force myself to do a little something”) — and then backstroke all the way back.
This is being human, right?
Or maybe a “hormonal” woman?
Or maybe just me becoming me?
I have 2 things I try to remember these days:
1. Treasure the mundane. Tip-toe in this holy ground we call everyday — doing the laundry, the dishes, the cleaning. Deleting that annoying spam VM, watering the plants, eating that so-so meal, responding to emails and texts, going to (and doing the) work.
Maybe if I can embrace this mundane sacrednes I’ll be be able to continually tap into the core of life.
I used to scoff at the thought of “barely surviving” but these days, I’m realizing that “just surviving” is enough. There is glory and magic in it — once you allow the details to seep through your bones.
I say that with a small smile because after traveling and exploring for 21 months straight and doing a lot of the things I’ve always wanted to do … I slowly understood that even this exciting, dream of dreams, “gets old.” And there, I began to realize that really, *any* kind of life or dream, gets old.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ll do it all over again. And I’ll probably always believe in dreaming those dreamy dreams. But pleasure, like pain, is incredibly fickle.
I hesitate now to anchor myself in dreams or goals or a big sense of purpose (as we’re so often told). Instead, I’m trying to anchor myself in the ordinary, the small, the very, very, very simple. The stripped-down, bare-bones, naked things of life.
2. We all have a limited (physical) time here — even the Earth, the Sun, the Moon. Me + my friends & family are only here for a time. Who knows if it’s long or short but what we know for sure? It’s limited. Finite. A certain number of days, a certain changing of the seasons, a certain rotating of the planets…
I’m borrowing now from one of Sam Harris’ meditation podcast that I found to be really special. He says, once we remember the limits of our life and the life of everything and everyone around us, things feel “poignant.”
Everything is tender… touching, maybe even heartbreaking.
Dropping your kids to school today, is one time less that you’ll be doing that in your lifetime…
*Whatever* you’re doing now is a subtraction to a finite number. Cherish.
At the end of the day, maybe it is allowing life to break our hearts. And then allowing life to piece us back together.
Maybe it’s the only way to live in this world of physics and chemistry, of time and space.
It’ll be nice to hold this understanding, always, on my right hand, in my mouth or inside my heart.
I visualize this as holding a glass plate and understanding its fragility — so I can fill it up wisely with “things” as I see fit.
Maybe there is power and strength in fully opening our eyes and hearts to life’s very fragile and changeable nature. So we can live and let live, delicately and sincerely.
So that while we walk this earth, we thread lightly, with a sense of wonder.
Awe.
We are not entitled to this life.
Being here is a gift. (A precious, good one.)
But still, only a gift.
