It’s Been a Little Rocky

I meant to post on here. I really did. In fact, I wrote two pieces in Panama that I frickin’ loved. It’s an amazing feeling to write something that I feel so intrinsically aligned with, so connected to, so, well, in love with. And I had done it! But then I got back to the US; packed for college, moved into my new apartment, started school, and my summer stint became just that. I didn’t take the time to re-read my pieces and edit them, which I always do before posting. Then all of a sudden, or now I should say, it’s Winter break and it seems too late to post about the past. Panama feels like a lifetime ago.

I still want to feel that life though, because I felt like I had all these realizations while living it. I made all these connections that felt pure and genuine and untethered. I was an equanimous being! That is until I returned to my origins and let my neurotic tendencies rewash over me like the waves I had just left.

From Bocas to Biology

There still has been lots of good between then and now. I thoroughly enjoyed my fall quarter of sophomore year at Cal Poly. I made some new friends and saw some old ones and got to watch Slo go round. But, I didn’t get to write, post on here, work on my book, or play that much music.

I was busy in a way that didn’t fulfill me creatively or humanisticly. I was busy, but I swear if I looked at my screen time, its dawdling could account for days. I checked emails that were unimportant and looked at internships I never would want to actually have. I spent five minutes here and there on this or that, which accumulated to a brain consistently overloaded without being meaningfully stimulated. It was something hard to catch in the moment because as I said, I really was busy.

To Do Lists// Credit: Pixabay

Then I came home: the busyness was ripped out from under my feet and served to me on an empty platter. Meaning I could see it, but was no longer thrusted in the middle of it. The distance has given me my internal perspicacity again. I am looking back on old projects with its sense and looking forward to new ones with its guidance. I want to work on what I truly feel aligned with, even when the trajectory of that seems rather elusive.

Elusivity is something I am conditioned to fear. Having things out of grasp, tangibility in prayers instead of pockets, it just is not an American state of being. Accolades and approval come from being able to say “this is what I have done and why it was good and how it was a rung on my ever-growing life ladder.”

Climbing a Ladder Credit:// Pixabay

I’ve been obsessed with the rush from that specific climb.

But now I am aware of another rush. One much more forgiving and flowing. It’s a rush that comes from no rush at all. From states of flow and awe, sites of inexplicability and miracles, and feelings of serenity. I find these moments when I’m not really looking for them, more so simply looking. Not at what things could be or could do, but what they are.

For example, I’m writing from the mountains right now, which yes is inherently an amazing and fortunate place to be, but I found perspective plays a factor as well. There are so many pros and cons to every nick and nack of a day, of a life. I’m usually the first to weigh them. Yet, more and more, I’ve found leaving them immeasurable is what creates these moments of serenity, this rush. Because it’s quite cool and beautiful how different our tomorrow’s are and how we only know that when they come.

So back to my example.

Yesterday I was doing my last run in the pre-sunset lighting; a bright and dusty rose warm sky. I was listening to my light jazz playlist and practically the last person left on the mountain. I felt so grateful for this life I wanted to scream. How perfect it was, to be gliding through air right there after a bluebird day. I drove back slowly, sucking in every drop of the sunset over the hills and feeling at home. Looking at the sunburn setting in on my face, thinking of all the cool people I met on the lift and funny conversations that weren’t tied to even names. I thought, “Wow, what a perfect day.”

And who wouldn’t want to repeat a perfect day?

NaturaIly I did, and upon waking up again, I searched for those bluebird skies. But I couldn’t see them, let alone more than 10 feet in front of me. I had to pack on two extra layers and tuck every loose end in somewhere for warmth. I sat on my hands on the lift to bring them back to life and couldn’t prattle with all that fabric. I found myself again to be taking my last run pretty much alone, at almost the same time as the day before. This time the world was one big cloud, rose something hard to imagine. I plopped down on my butt and looked around. All that had been so beautiful yesterday was hidden, leaving all that was so beautiful now to come.

And then the day after, well the day after I was doing jack shit. It was the same time, 4pm, and I was sitting on my couch. Inherently I wished to be back on the mountain looking at either rose or cloud, but then I stopped and looked around. It had been so long since I’d seen one of my dog Nash’s bursts of energy, where he stretches and contracts like a seizing bird on the floor. He was doing so. It had so long since I got to use the blanket that always rests on my living room couch. I did so.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 1, Day 2, Day 3

I know this is a fruitful three day example, so I don’t intend it to be widely applicable. I just thought I could use it’s premise.

So the premise: What we have, when we have it, that is where the rush of life comes from—recognizing how special and chance a moment is. Just because a certain aspect made it so does not make its absence the opposite experience. I think that is what has had me so confused in the past. If the warm, dusty sky, was what made me feel so grateful for this life, then wouldn’t the cold, barren wind create the opposite feeling? Wouldn’t sitting and doing nothing be a waste?

It could. Or it couldn’t—because I am the one doing the feeling.

So yes, I have been feeling like it’s been a little rocky. But I think the majority of those rocks I put in place myself, simply because the ground underneath didn’t look how I thought it ought to. It didn’t look like it had in my favorite moments or my reveries. Consequentially, I handmade each day’s nadir.

A lot of resentment came from doing that. By focusing only on natural happiness (what we get when we get what we want/ things go as planned) I missed so much synthetic happiness (what we create when we don’t get what we want/ or things don’t go as planned). I missed it because I was unable to acknowledge it could taste as sweet.

According to Harvard Psychologist Dan Gilbert and his TedTalk The surprising science of happiness, I’m not alone. The world doesn’t believe we can create the same level of happiness from second, third, or fourth choices as we can from first, because if it did, what kind of economy would we have? It pays to chase happiness.

I think busyness has been my recent form of payment. I did the things I thought could eventually allow me to achieve happiness, to get what I want. I tried to prepare for the future and conserve in the present. Saving myself for a time when I crossed that magic line. It was living for tomorrow.

And when you live for something everchanging, you are always disappointed. Whatever we dream up won’t happen scene by scene. To feel the rush of life, well, you have to actually be there to feel it—out of your mind and in your body. That is the difference. It wasn’t the ocean or the weather, although I loved both, that made me so happy traveling. It was that I was present, day in and day out, because I didn’t feel the need to be anywhere else.

Wherever I am, I know I feel the most present doing the things I love, and I love a lot of things. It’s just that I have been quite perfidious to them recently, which is something I intend to leave in 2024. Living more aligned with love, unafraid of elusivity, and in each moment, I’ll be able to navigate my own rocky path. Expect some old posts soon.

XOXO- Happy New Year’s Eve.