ir a principal |
Ir a lateral
From DailyOM:
January 30, 2012
Waiting for Someday
Why Not Now?
All the joy and passion you can envision can be yours right now, rather than in a future point in time.
The time we are blessed with is limited and tends to be used up all too
quickly. How we utilize that time is consequently one of the most
important decisions we make. Yet it is far too easy to put off until
tomorrow what we are dreaming of today. The hectic pace of modern
existence affords us an easy out; we shelve our aspirations so we can
cope more effectively with the challenges of the present, ostensibly to
have more time and leisure to realize our purpose in the future. Or we
tell ourselves that we will chase our dreams someday once we have
accomplished other lesser goals. In truth, it is our fear that keeps us
from seeking fulfillment in the here and now—because we view failure as a
possibility, our reasons for delaying our inevitable success seem sound
and rational. If we ask ourselves what we are really waiting for,
however, we discover that there is no truly compelling reason why we
should put off the pursuit of the dreams that sustain us.
When regarded as a question, "Why not now?" drains us of our power to
realize our ambitions. We are so concerned with the notion that we are
somehow undeserving of happiness that we cannot see that there is much
we can do in the present to begin courting it. Yet when we look
decisively at our existence and state, "Why not now, indeed!" we are
empowered to begin changing our lives this very moment. We procrastinate
for many reasons, from a perceived lack of time to a legitimate lack of
self-belief, but the truth of the matter is that there is no time like
the present and no time but the present. Whatever we aim to accomplish,
we will achieve it more quickly and with a greater degree of efficiency
when we seize the day and make the most of the resources we have at our
disposal presently.
All the joy, passion, and contentment you can envision can be yours
right now, rather than in some far-flung point in time. You need only
remind yourself that there is nothing standing between you and
fulfillment. If you decide that today is the day you will take your
destiny into your hands, you will soon discover that you hold the keys
of fate.
They call it petrichor, though I don't feel that captures it. It's too scientific, as if white-clad men walked through fields with clipboards, noting down this or that, and then sat down around a wooden table to discuss what they could call their experience. Analytically speaking, the word petrichor works. It's an ichor on rocks, probably water, ergo rain. But that enters through your eyes, not through the hairs in your nose.
Petrichor is heavy. It smells heavy, not as if gravity changed, but I feel my face somehow pulled towards the ground. Petrichor nudges me to prostrate. Even as I sit here to write this, my back is hunched more noticeably than I would normally notice it, and I take glances at the open window which is slanted to my left. Raindrops are appearing on it. Dots of whiter light, from the sky, they are bringing the sky down into my window. Soon there's an accumulation, un saupoudrage of firmament pieces, known to evaporate or be replaced in the near future, but for now attached. Now and again, one slides down, tear-trickling. I wonder if the sky is crying, or whether God is. As a child, I must have had that thought, that rain was Dieu en larmes. Later on, my opinion must've changed because I had the thought that rain was God pissing, as if the vulgarity of it implied that it wasn't supposed to be there. Then in adolescence, I learned about the water cycle, and it no longer made sense to talk about God and the rain in the same sentence. And now, after an indeterminate amount of time has passed and it's still now, I like rain. I cannot really distinguish a non-nebulose reason, but there's something quiet about it. Something guaranteed, yet uncertain. Like it's there, and it's coming down and it's happening, and I can have emotions associated with it, and that it passes, and while it's here, it can be enjoyed. It's a phenomenon that happens often enough that I consider it unnecessary to give it much thought. I know people who hate the rain, who complain when it comes, who give it a personality and idolise it as a deity whose hate is channeled into him or her who deified the weather. I don't think these people are stupid, but I think it's unnecessary to bitch about rain. In a way, it's like procrastination - something to express that comes from a greater but more deep-seated misunderstanding about pain and its connection to life events. I feel though as if I'm now having a bitch about people having a bitch. Smooth. It makes me feel knot-tied inside, as if I'm restraining myself, trying not to say some things so as to appear a certain way, but then trying to be liberating. The paradoxical struggle.
I'm analytical and logical-thinking, but when it comes to rain, it just falls and then it doesn't and then it does and then it doesn't. I like the smell of the earth after though. That's what I wanted to say. Thoughts like the previous paragraph of jungle-understanding are boring me now. I like that, too.
A year of holding something within, afraid of what the repercussions of its seeing light might be, ended in a spontaneous 4a.m. letter, one I did not envision I would write, though with hindsight, I am thankful to have felt the spur. I could not sleep much on the 20th of January. I was excited. I felt apprehensive. Yet two nights earlier, a shift had occurred in my feelings, or rather in my understanding of them. I suddenly was confronted with my inability to find soulutions to the problems I had in my mind. Baffled. I had tried possibilities, new ways of thinking, attempted to origami myself an epiphany, as I had done many a times before, and after trying so many times to reach success without success, I felt the path of looking had worn me out. I felt, this wasn't the way. And it came as a bizarre emotion - an emotion that normally I would try to think through and soulutionise, yet this time, I couldn't, because there were no thoughts to think about. I tried making some, but I knew them as illusions and couldn't convince myself otherwise, of which I am thankful. So I took the day, the Wednesday, and felt. I said to my friends that it was a time of digestion. I needed then, to let my body digest, to pass this emotion that had been held within my chest. That night, conversation came. With the emotion still in my chest, but with few strings of thought tying it there, I described what I felt and why I felt that. Without my mental interference, the right words came. And then they were reflected back to me, my interlocutrice holding up that mirror I'd avoided seeing because I was too busy thinking about it, and I saw in it, a smile, in my chest, in my soul.
The shift. Overthinking, i.e. fixation would not yield answers to questions I had. Simple. The truth always is. I'd read that thinking would not bring answers, though perhaps I had not believed it with my heart. So it appears I had to stop, even for a day, looking for the answers in my mind, and let, trust, the answer to come to me. And she did, right then, in the evening. She looked at me with knowing eyes, with an expression of understanding and contentment that for the first time I was seeing her. I could not stop smiling. There she was, waiting for me. We embraced, because what can souls do when they feel love for each other, when they feel validated, known, trusted. We were one.
The beautiful simplicity of that shift had lead on to remind me that there was no further need to hold things mind-locked. So early the Friday morning, the absence of sleep allowed for my heart to open and indicate to me a letter I needed to write. It was a letter to a friend, a dear friend who lost someone and whom my mind had depreciated and disrespected, yet loved. I felt the impulse of an idea to write him this letter, explaining to him what I had held in my mind about his friend's death and how I had treated him, unworried in my heart about what he would think, because I felt it was time for me to know that he would not judge. I struggled to believe that, which is why I held the secret of my mistreatment of him in my mind. It took an hour and a half to draft, and then later in the morning, another hour or so to write up on presentable paper. It was cathartic, because I was releasing emotion. The letter was addressed to him, because I felt he was the right one to read it, though it was also meant for me, meant to be my release, because I knew that if I were to just let him know of the thoughts I had and why I could not justify them, I would be free of them, I would be free of trying to figure out reasoning for their being there, and then, I could just accept them as occurrences.
I placed the letter around the stem of a white rose, gave it to him inside a box, as a surprise.
The weekend came, and not hearing from him made me feel afraid that he may not have sympathised with me, that perhaps he had decided to cut me out. I did not hear about the letter until Sunday afternoon. Before that moment, I had been doubting in anticipation, his answer. I had become afraid because I was relying on a future outcome, an outcome I wanted to predict desperately though I could not. That was the old mental pattern. But then the shift from Wednesday made itself felt again, and I was reminded after watching a video by Kim Eng, that the answer, the reaction, I had been looking for from him, would not come when I wanted it to (a.s.a.p.) but when it was right for it, and that worrying about it in the meantime was not going to affect it. So towards the afternoon of Sunday, when I made this realisation, I finally was able to let go enough of thinking about how my friend was thinking to go on with my day. And sure enough, when the time was right, he began to talk to me.
He said he'd read the letter and did not judge me for it. I was very relieved to hear this, because my mind had also made up stories about how he would be vengeful or angry. Yet he wasn't. He was just... accepting. I felt like I owed him an explanation, as I told him. And he said I did not owe him anything. Then I said to him, perhaps I need to talk to him again, because I owed it to myself, and he accepted that. I came online earlier tonight, thinking I would talk to him but he was offline, so this blog post is the result of that. I was thinking about what to say to him, again, old mental patterns trying to get me thinking about answers beforehand so as to be prepared to give them. But nothing that I have thought of feels right, because there are too many factors to consider and I cannot judge them. I do not have that vision. Yet, I feel it in me to thank him. His acceptance, his forgiveness, is the answer I was looking for, the answer I craved, because it is love. He said he does not say "I love you" but shows it. And through this, he showed me.
So I thank him for his gift. I am grateful to know him, to know his kindness. We are blessed. We are blessed, truly.
When? my mind asked,
when I saw the summer of her
talking on the sidewalk
and I stopped just short to politely wait.
When? my mind asked,
when Santa dropped off her gift,
when she accused me of being sneaky
with a sneaky smile.
When? my mind asked,
when we sat down menu-waiting,
thirsty, talking about her eyes,
sipping on blind conversation.
When? my mind asked,
between the fallen knife
and the plate-clanged fork,
trading prawn for chicken.
When? my mind asked,
by the umbrella, to the left,
further to the left, shuttered
manytimes that moment.
When? my mind asked,
when her pink toes scraped
through the grasses, when mine
yearned to join.
When? my mind asked,
when bouncing we stepped
around, by and onto
sticks and leaves.
When? my mind asked,
when we threaded held arms
through the needle of her
laughter and mine.
When? my mind asked,
when her lips moved and sound came,
when we would have shared a kiss
had when been then.
When? my mind asked,
when she opened her gift
and she came to my side
and I held summer inside.
When? my mind asked,
as we walked the minute to the bus
and we stopped by the smoke
and traffic noise and thankstood.
When? my mind asked,
as I sat in a seat next to another,
and my mind asked when?
and did not give an answer.
The coming of peace is the last progress of man, the last movement forward before man is at one with himself. Underneath this movement, peace is gurgling. I am man; a man and man himself, taking this great stride across an inch of nothing, smaller than a blade of grass, thinner than a leaf, but as important as the growing of a seed.
From the concrete, who knew that a flower would grow? ~ Drake
I woke up this morning with questions, questions about progress and where everything was going, questions about purpose and what my life serves to do.
Where do we go from here? How do we carry on? I can't get beyond the questions. ~ Imogen Heap
The big picture is obscure, because my eyes do not see everything, and so there are corners or areas towards the frame or even areas towards the middle that are hidden from my view. When I try to focus on one strand, on one brushstroke, it eventually disappears into the shadow, like a trail to nowhere, yet it is somewhere that it goes. Some would say that the painting is incomplete, and being painted by me as I choose where to go. Some would say it's already a masterpiece, waiting to be unveiled over a lifetime. Oh, the suspense to partake in. I am blind then, right now, or at least visually impaired. What I mean is, I am young. And I don't see where the trail is taking me. I see alternatives, and placing a spotlight upon those unweaves them like a web ahead of me. When a choice is made, the alternatives fade back into obscurity and the history then appears vivid before me, shadows dancing from detail to detail, hiding as memory fades, repainting as the mind reinvents.
Answers. Answers come with the questions. They are ever tied together, held by a pact weaved beyond the limitations of time and form, beyond expression. Man, I, makes progress by continuing on a path, going somewhere. I don't know if man knows where he is going. It seems impossible not to be going somewhere. Man seems to drive his own path, yet some say it is pre-chalked. How do I know if where I am going is my imagining, or if I am actually going there. I suppose I need not think about it. Where I go, is where I go. But when I think of choice, I think of possibility. And I believe that whatever choice I make is right, because it is the made choice. Yet I still wonder where I am going, or if I am just walking on life's treadmill, and feeling like I'm going.
The words of wisdom, the advice is still the same. Just be. Just go. Don't think about it. Trust eludes me, perhaps because I don't know where to anchor it. I think I do. But then if I don't think, where is it? It seems I have to stop writing to know it.
Life is beautiful. I just saw an Italian film entitled such. We forget that it is, even when the circumstances appear to be anything but fantab, and the film recreates the power of seeing what cannot be controlled and what appears bleak through lenses en rose. It is a reminder of the power of our perception, and the influence that a parent can have upon a child's mind, making of shattered glass reflected shards of childlike happiness. To the boy, the Holocaust and the taking of his family, including himself, to the concentration camps, was a game with the prize being the winning of a real tank. Somehow, the tank at the end did appear, even after his father was shot behind a building. And he won.
Gas chambers, people being cooked alive, hard labour, injuries, screaming, torture, atrocities, and he won.
It seems to me like the beauty in life is ours to behold, or not, as the case may be. It is there in its design, and we can see it because we can recognise it as the same as within ourselves. The world's us, I've said it many times, manyform. And in it we act as we behold, and react accordingly if we believe in what we see and want to see more of it. Momentum is gathered by the movement of our thoughts towards that which we seek to see. Believing is seeing. So, if you want to win a tank, believe it, and you'll see it ;)
Metaphors happen all around us that meet what we have asked for, whether we know it or not. Imperfection is impossible in this respect. I seem to want to talk about so many things here, but not actually in these words. So maybe I'll leave it to words to channel elsethings, anothertime.
Dear,
This is addressing that will, that fletchling of a thought that seeks certainty in all, that wants to be sure what I say is right, or qualified, or correct, so as to avoid any confrontation that might ensue... You won't find it, ever. You can never be so sure of everything. And you cannot hold back from risk-taking because of that.
You may ask how sure I can be of these words? Well... you can wonder all you like and try to find the security even if words that say there is not security, but the realisation that there is no being totally sure is just a step into the risk direction. You can't be sure. And you can't be sure that you can't be sure, either. We can go on. But my point remains. You never know.
So to the thought that say you could still somehow know... I don't think it knew.
Haha I can't say anything.
Which is precisely why I can say anything. I can't be sure of it... but I can say it.
The gap is bridged by trust.
2011. A number. A year. 365 days. Moments divisible by you, by me, in different ways. What has it meant for me? Memories, evolution, realisations, meetings with truth, endings, beginnings. Change.
This year has found me go to a foreign country for the first time, and what an experience that was. What a blessing it was. Three weeks of New Caledonia. Three weeks of joy, franglais, growing up, heart-seeking and heart-finding. And it's proven to be true. What you ask for is what you get.
It is the same law that applies to my relationships. I have found in them what I have asked them to be. Love was reaffirmed. And I say that because it had seemed to me important to doubt it until I was sure I understood and measured what others felt for me. But I was mistaken to think so. To accept love
when it is given, not to question it, is one of the most profound and
simple pieces of wisdom shared with me by one of my best friends. It
is, as it is. Just let it be.
I have to remind myself of that so that I do actually let go, because my tendency is to hold on and think things over too much; to doubt what I know and confuse myself. Clearly the answers must come from elseplace, not my own learned patterns.
And now we have moved on to the 2012th year since the beginning of the count. Last year was plein de rires and some tears. I feel the wiser though, having gone through them. Hardship teaches. So does joy. We get to choose our teacher, yet sometimes we fail to realise who we have really chosen. I know I went through periods where I simply didn't know what I was doing. I have made peace with the discomfort of not knowing exactly what I was doing though, because for the first time, I have had to step out of my comfort zone again and again, and thus redefine my boundaries. And I was told in New Caledonia of a saying uttered by a Greek philosopher. The more I know, the less I know. I have felt this because my mind has expanded and allowed me to accept new people, new habits, new thoughts. Yet with this variation in what can be, I realised there is so much potential for difference, for what is not known, unknowable even. Where I am going used to be a simply answerable question. Now, it is but a recognition that I don't know. Must I be heading somewhere, I ask? For the ease of thinking and expression, I find it comfortable to think that I am going somewhere positive. That said, upon closer examination, there's hardly a set path through to it. And no map. But there's something. Drive. Something.
So what do I choose for those that surround me, and those who can hear me from miles? Love? Joy? Peace? Freedom? All of these things are given. They are already there. What we have to learn, over and over until we learn, is choice. Responsibility. So I choose this year that we collectively make conscious choices to have that which we need; to be who we are.
