Choice or Feeling?

Does non-stop moving take you away from sad thoughts or yourself? Does chasing goals fill your life with meaning or simply helps days end faster? Is anything real because it’s meant to be or do you make up your own reality? The answer is always BOTH. There isn’t one thing in life that is absolute, it’s a unity of the opposite poles – hence, never-ending fight of what should be mutually-exclusive ideas; ever-present paradox. You just need to lean towards one pole more than the other, yet keeping both in mind as possible. It’s like choosing to be good yet acknowledging that there will always be room for mistakes.

Can your true personality be tested by an impulse? When a neighbor’s girl came to our house bleeding because she cut herself badly on the glass, my husband mumbled “why don’t you call 911” and I screamed “let’s go, we are taking you to the hospital”. Does that make him bad (well, he was extremely tired) and me good because I didn’t question my decision for a second? We spent three hours in the emergency room and my sister, upon hearing the story, said that maybe one day someone will help me too because I need it, this will compensate for all the inconvenience we went through. But that’s not how I was thinking! I wasn’t earning points maybe for once in my life. It did feel absolute. There are many decisions I make out of duty whereas emotionally I’m out of it: I force myself to be good and to care whereas my true self doesn’t give a damn. And it upsets me because I am a supporter of goodness. So it makes me feel relieved to care for real, as if I surprise myself with my own capabilities, with the grandness of my heart I didn’t know was there.

And what does really count? Being good because that’s the way to be or being genuinely good because your heart is in it? Or be honestly indifferent? Or cultivate goodness in the place of indifference and thus slowly push it out? Will the law of the transformation of quantity into quality apply here?

Happy, Passive, Lazy

I want to challenge myself but I’ve had too much long-sought comfort lately to rush and disrupt it. I cherish this comfort, I cherish sleeping through the night because no anxiety chases the sleep away. But I also feel like I’m getting too inert, too sleepy, too lazy…. This recent inactivity after a chain of my previous battles has slowly been turning from a getaway to a burden. You want to avoid any kind of extremes in life, even the positive ones, since they soften you up, turn your brain into a mushy jelly, opiate the acuteness of feeling.

I made it easier for myself to give up, to accept that “it is what it is”, to postpone making decisions till some indefinite future moment when “the opportunity presents itself”. I feel being dragged by days that come and go, only occasionally rebelling and briefly taking control back. But once I get really angry because my passiveness resulted in the undesirable deviation in the course of things, my determination and will resurface with long-forgotten strength. Then I begin fixing what went wrong, amazed by a number of options I failed to see or consider before.

This mind slumber is dangerous. Even once you snap yourself out of trance and successfully implement all your life-changing reforms, it’s painful to look back, to feel regret for time lost. Apparently staying alert takes effort: even if it means challenging yourself on a daily basis to achieve simple tasks that are not crucial for your well-being yet essential for self-discipline. Staying open-minded and flexible will help you notice sooner the dead-end ahead and promptly change direction.

Book Cure

Lately I’ve been obsessed with everything books. Goodreads.com has been my guilty pleasure and secret getaway for a few months now. I like to read books, and I like to read about what others like to read. I enjoy book reviews even for books I haven’t read; scanning through the “most popular” and “most read” lists, checking out upcoming book releases, admiring fancy book covers.

I read through my childhood simply because there was nothing else to fill up huge chunks of free time with. But as I was growing up, I read less, and less, and less… First it was the excessive demand of school and the need to keep up with my studies. Then more and more fun TV shows were emerging, leaving little time for books. Then came the era of adolescence, partying, relationships, networking…. Next came those first challenging years in New York. Then having my baby. I read throughout it sporadically but it was nothing like compulsive reading I did as a child, reading that transferred me to the dreamy non-existent but nonetheless so real world, that stretched far beyond the gate of the book cover.

About a year ago I decided to make a comeback to the book paradise, which was once my refuge. First I didn’t know what to read and was asking everyone for suggestions. Now my to-read list is so long yet I keep adding more titles. I once read about bibliotherapy – “prescribing” certain kind of books to depressed people to elevate their pain. And I’ve been practicing this “alternative medicine” method ever since, self-prescribing fantasy, adventure-books or melancholic prose, depending on what my emotional state was at the time. What I noticed was the more I read, the shorter the bouts of darker mood would get. The random attacks of depression, melancholy or loneliness would get less aggressive and easier to endure. I simply couldn’t entirely focus on my problems anymore – there were other worlds, and characters, and story development that demanded my attention as well.

Oh, and how books were helping me with work related stress! I would replay the details of a business meeting over and over in my head, till I felt that my brain is about to boil. Emerging into a book put an instant end to work-thinking thoughts, relaxing those memory spasms that force you to jump back and think what could have been done differently. Some people go to a bar after work because they need help loosening the grip of stress - books are my universal cure.

No matter how things turn around – there are always books. To keep me company, to help me progress in my way of thinking, to teach something new or simply entertain me. With books I explore what I took for granted and see that there are more layers to everything. And I get to linger, hide comfortably in those layers. As long as there are books, I know I can handle life and what it throws at me, because I can recharge in the blissful world of intricately interwoven words.

Inspired by "A World Without Books"

Things That Make Me Sad: MONDAYS!

It’s a horrible Monday and I am free-falling into abyss. So maybe I got up on the wrong side of bed, but bad news kept coming throughout the day. I cannot describe the sharpness of my urge to quit trying just for one day, stop pretending that I can handle it because I can’t , I’m barely hanging by a thread. It’s just a rough day and on days like this people should be allowed to go home and sleep through it. Anyway, no one but myself can grant me this kind of freedom (and I won’t do that because dealing with the consequences is a sure way to prolong the pain). I will keep hanging in there for the next few hours, hoping that tomorrow will truly be a fresh start.

But I would so much rather be here now:

Next Stop

Imagine standing still on a platform of a train station. Everything is in commotion – people rushing, trains arriving and departing, workers sweating. The atmosphere is tense and mindlessly exciting. But you are not part of this big movement, you stepped aside and let everything pass you by. You are observing the crowd, trying to wrap your mind around one question: what’s the rush? Where are you guys running? Can I run with you? There is a barely comprehensible need to be with these people, to follow the stream of heads and bodies, that movement full of purpose and determination.

So you focus hard in order to find your own focus and determination in your head, where you believe they should be stored. You manage to pull out a couple of lazy forced goals, which will do for the moment, and happily join the crowd. Now you are running along with everybody else, wearing a proper expression of preoccupation on your face. You’re nervously checking the time because you are running late. You get annoyed by someone stepping on your foot, or by an accidental elbow jolt. But you already caught on the rhythm of the race: your thinking process becomes more shallow, your goal a blur, but as long as you follow the crowd you’ll get there…

And then you see a person standing aside, pensively observing the crowd. And you feel slightly annoyed that someone is wasting time on idleness. You are proud to be a member of the purposefully running crowd. But you are also jealous because by now you are out of breath and there are still 2 days till you reach the next weekend, which is your scheduled stop. And that person, standing there on the platform, seems to be having a good time. Of course, he doesn’t have my responsibilities, you think angrily. I could enjoy that kind of leisure instead of the crazy run.

This is you, ever anxious to join the race of life, not to miss out, always to make it on time. And this is you, dying to get out of the crowd, to break free and enjoy a still moment, to see life for what it is in its entirety, not bits and pieces you spot when running. And even as you steal those moments of quiet, in no time you crave to be back in the race. This is the paradox, the idea of freedom that you’ll never reach, because you are living in two different dimensions, which can never merge, become one. And you will always want both.

Something New

Occasionally I feel this acute longing for changes. Once you reach some kind of stability in life, it won’t be long before it starts burdening you with its sense of predictability and boredom. And you are surprised at your own thoughts of how much you want to escape this trouble-free life and go explore wilderness, or do something equally crazy. Then your favorite word becomes N-E-W, and you search for new anything to satisfy the craving of novelty that threatens to overturn your stable world. I guess it’s the impact of spring as well in a way it sharpens and fortifies your desires, and makes you look so far away and almost see something big there. Something is coming for you. New. Big.

These thoughts equally excite and scare me. Sometimes I fear that holding back too much will only result in a leap forward, some radical act to quiet the itching once and for all. I had my share of crazy acts in the past. But then I pulled back and did what they call settling down. And my life felt smaller. Comfortable and safe, but small, almost invisible.

So I decided to partner with the N-E-W in a different way and explore life from that perspective. I hear people saying all the time – if only I had a new job, a new house, a new spouse, a new (fill in the blank), my life would improve in an instant. I can’t be fooled by this utopic thinking. Because new becomes old pretty quickly, and how many Big New changes can you incur in a lifetime? It’s not like you can buy a new house every two months (and even that will become old pretty soon).
And I figured I should stick with a small N-E-W and hope to compensate its overall lack of bigness by quantity and diversity. I looked for small new things every day: a new book added to my to-read list, a new idea fished from someone’s blog that gave me food for thought, a new word that I stumbled upon and lookup up in thesaurus. I bought new curtains for my bedroom that fully block the sun and create this awesome, inexperienced before darkness every morning. I cut my hair. I wrote to people I didn’t write to before. I paired items of closing it didn’t occur to me to wear together before. I tried new kind of ice-cream.

And if I still long for some newness, I write a new blog post because it’s a sure way to create something new, something that never existed before. It guarantees enough satisfaction and sense of achievement, and it helps me get a healthy dose of novelty, without overdoing it, or getting overemotional. Every day can be a source of N-E-W, but rather than waiting for it to knock on your front door, go and get it.

When My Soul Flew Away

When we were on vacation we saw a terrific circus performance. In fact there were so many precious moments during our one week getaway that it’s almost terrifying how quickly the memories are fading away and how desperately I want to hold on to them because our next vacation is at least a year away. Yet that circus show was THE grand impression that out-shadowed everything else. There was this athlete on a flying trapeze who was doing crazy stunts, and we, the crowd, forgot to breathe, but would exhale with every safe landing, and applaud, and hold our breath again 20 seconds later. He was flying under the open starlit sky, following the rhythm of a soft melody of Enya’s song.

I still listen to the song and every time I see him flying, and remember the moment and what I felt. It’s not like I was flying with him, but I wasn’t on the ground either, I was in a different dimension altogether. I felt so free, so myself, so connected to life and detached from it completely at the same time. It’s the effect that various forms of art have upon us at times – they help us escape life by transferring us to a new place, which feels like home, so escape is more like a return to where we belong.

It was the brightness of the stars above us, the rustle of the palm trees, the warmth of the breeze after a long winter, a sense of novelty that you always get on your first day of vacation in a new place, new country – all of these clicked and made the moment that was absolute in its perfection, the kind of moment you never want to end because you know this is it. The rare highlight of life when you are on cloud number 9. There are happy moments in daily life if you pay attention,they persuade you that life is good and make you feel grateful. Yet there are also crazy happy moments that grab your attention, and captivate you, shake you up emotionally and transform you spiritually. Those are the moments you store away, like treasure, out of oblivion's reach. And now that I put this memory in words, I immortalized it into a private harbor, where my mind can rest on days it loses perspective.