The One without a Title

I stopped... It took me some 24 years but I stopped.

The rush.

And suddenly it's quiet and my mind is in a dazed state of clarity.

Don't we all rush to get things done? Isn't that what they tell us since we take our first breath screaming on the top of our lungs?

'Get it done! Do this and do that! Finish it'

And we are stressed because we are already so old in our twenties. We have been alive for so long and  we are not yet the greatest, we are not famous, we don't have this and don't have that... And the list of tasks is getting longer and longer and we are getting slower and slower at checking things off that list... so we rush even more because we are running out of time...

Before you can get the life you want you have to tick a certain number of boxes on this list... isn't that what echoes among the walls of our minds, what they repeat and paraphrase? Over and over and over and over again... So we go on rushing through the tasks and never pay attention to any of them. Our speed-dazed minds are already thinking of the next task before we even start the one before.

Nobody bothers to mentions that those tasks you rush to get done are your life. Maybe not the one you want but definitely the one you are living. If such state of existence even classifies as 'living'...

Oh, don't think this thought is new to me... These ideas were swirling in my mind ten years ago when I spent my days observing the world from the safety of my attic room, staring out the window and pouring my soul on pages of countless notebooks. Throwing up in words all the garbage from my mind and selecting the jewels from trash.

I swore to myself I would not do that. I wouldn't believe what they told me. I wouldn't do what they told me. I decided to live my life the way I want. Choose what to believe and how to live. After all, I was given a brain and I intended to use it.

Beautiful ideas... ideas are always easy to talk about!

Talking is easy. Believing... not so much.

Living in accord with ideas is even tougher.

Everyday life is a sneaky little bastard, it makes our glorious ideas look so silly. Why? Well,  first of all, it gives us very little time to think... we are left adrift to our feelings. So, if feelings are in conflict with the ideas... Huston, we have a problem!

Ideas are products of our minds... the words give them sound; language lets them breath and reproduce. However, believing does not come from the mind, nor does living. It digs deeper into our selves... those selves we do not quite like to talk about because we cannot quite grasp the concept and that is unacceptable. We live in a very smart and slightly self-involved century... people have never been more intelligent (at least that is a wide-spread opinion). Nowadays, it is an unpopular choice to deviate from the mind - we are too advanced to be charlatans.

But the truth is that ideas in itself are powerless, fragile creatures scrapping along at the end of food chain... it is our faith in them that gives them strength. It is that deeply rooted feeling  that makes us LIVE the ideas.

The conflict arises when we think or find the ideas... we like them, we want them, we adopt them... and keep on talking about them, making sure everybody knows that these are our ideas, our way of life. And we go on talking without realising that this superficial fling with a philosophy is only skin-deep...  Nothing but a gilding on a cheap replica. You fool yourself into thinking  that you are that person and all kinds of little sins against this philosophy come and go unnoticed. Once in a while you repeat the ideas to your friends or strangers. You do so boldly, with a glass of beer or wine in your hand. You lay your cards on the table so the world can see you've got it all figured out and you are not afraid to say your opinions out loud. We all know that this speech is not for the people sitting around you, listening... it never is... it is always for ourselves. We need to remind ourselves who we are... in words, because , somehow, we cannot see it in our life.

So, yes, I was young and full of wonderful ideas and I went out into the world and did things differently... there were times it was not easy. I had to argue and defend my choices... I had to explain over and over things so natural to me but alien to people around me. And a lot of times I did not manage to explain and had to learn to live with the fact that I have hurt a person/people I love and care about... at least temporarily.

With a backpack full of passion and confusion I set out on my journey and done things differently.

Or did I?

My own passion fooled me.

Attention, here I am finally getting to the point!

The epiphany that struck me could not be simpler: I have not done things differently, I merely did different things. 

I refused the list of tasks they gave me... and blinded myself with another, cooler 'TO DO! list' gilded in an enviable ideology. And so I went off RUSHING through life... in my very own specific way!

Don't get me wrong, I am not regretting my choices. I am very grateful I made them and, truth be told, so far I have had a pretty amazing life mainly because I made these choices. The point is, it is mind who is telling me how amazing it all was... I can't really remember the feeling of it.

Do you know why?

Of course you do.... my writing is rubbish and I repeat myself constantly.

Anyway!

I rushed... to get it all done...

Not consciously of course!

That is the point! I thought I really deeply believed in all my precious ideas and lived by them courageously.

I did not... I tricked myself into it... like everybody else.

I was so busy becoming that I forgot to be.

To be... now.

Which was basically the fundamental point of my philosophy... and I stomped it into the ground and hid it under the footprints of my achievements.

OK, perhaps I am being a bit theatrical here but theatricality is a good tool to make a point clear.

I had been feeling that something was not quite right for quite some time. A few months ago, I started shyly dipping my toes in the sea of actual LIVING... I mean living in terms with my own philosophy (of course, I did not realise that at the time!). Things were set in motion!

A notion started to form inside me... a feeling that I could not name, could not grasp.

It hit me today! It hit me like a frying pan a cartoon character! One would think this was a moment of glory... but the price for leap into inner enlightenment is high - it serves you the realisation of how absolutely dumb you were till now for not getting it.  

Eureka!!!

 It is not really about what you do, or how much you do. It does not matter whether you travel the world, or never set a foot out of your country... whether you go off and achieve  goals that will affect many generations to come or whether you find a nice job, fall in love and have a family... Whether you become an artist or on accountant.

It is HOW you do it.. how much you give yourself into it.

Yes... nothing new...nothing you have not heard million times before.

But were you reading carefully?

I did not say - an idea was forming in my head...

A feeling.... and that feeling was a belief. A belief in the idea that has been in my head for years! Suddenly that idea was no longer swirling chaotically in my mind but it steadily resonated in my heartbeat. I set on the sofa, my body pleasantly tired, taste of ice-cream still lingering on my tongue, fairy-lights illuminating the room with a colourful soft glow as the dusk poured in through the tall window... I did not think.

I felt it.

Nobody ever tells us... Slow down! Breath! You don't need to become the president, reach the stars and break at least thirteen records by the age of twenty. This is your life now... not what you will be doing tomorrow or in 10 years... enjoy it, savour it.. whether it feels great or it hurts as hell... don't  ignore it... let it be. There is NO RUSH.

They don't tell us because it's scary and, most of all, liberating (and free people are dangerous).

It's incredibly frightening to live in The Now.

All the things that we have done, those that are finished and ticked off the list... they are done, they are the past. Past might make us feel uncomfortable but it's over, it cannot really reach us anymore. The present  we rush through. If our present is unpleasant, we rush through it because... well, we want to get it over with. If our present moment is good we rush through it to do even more of the 'good stuff'. And the future! The future is abstract. Future is always what we want it to be.

If you live in The Now... you are exposed! So vulnerable! There is nowhere to run, there is nowhere to hide. You have to face and deal with whatever comes your way. You are bound to confront the fact that although your past influenced you... you are not your past and also, that you might never become your future.

You simply are...

Now.

 Who you are is in your hands every second of everyday. You have to accept that you actually have power over yourself and your life. And that is fucking scary! No wonder I avoided it till now... but it's also exhilarating in the best sense of that word.

If you are not satisfied it is probably because,  most of the time, you don't actually do what you want, you don't say what you want. You, just carry on getting things done.

I am very scared... It's a huge step for me to admit something like this. I worked all my life to defy fear. Instead I should have just accepted it and gotten on with it. (Another moment of ''glory''... an older one, so I had time to come to terms with it).

I have always been afraid, especially of closeness!

 And guess what is the one thing I want?

Yes.

Exactly.

Sharing my 'self' is not so easy for me, I am too proud to be vulnerable... or at least I used to be... or am I still? I do not know. I always found this world to be strange and fascinating place. I found myself to be quite strange as well... Much stranger than others. A lone stranger in a world full of normal.  However,  I think that is because we just became so damn good in hiding how weird we are. Every single one of us! This strangeness makes us feel so inadequate sometimes. But inadequate for what? Nobody really knows... slowly this fear of mine, my little personal leach, is disappearing.

You see, fear is a bit pointless... It's an emotion created by POSSIBILITY of something happening. It's based on fiction. It has absolutely nothing to do with reality.

Oh, life is soooo good!!!!!

No grand words need to express that...

I am very happy! I feel awake and alive... Not because I've got it all figured out. It's because I am not rushing to have it all figured out. Figuring out is a process! A fun process and - let's face it- probably even more interesting than the thing you are so desperately trying to figure out.

I have so much work to do... on myself!

But there is no rush...

It's time to live fearlessly.

I dipped my toes, now let's jump!