Candy Coated Water Drops

“She would consider each day a miracle - which indeed it is, when you consider the number of unexpected things that could happen in each second of our fragile existences.”

- Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides To Die

I have come to a point in my life that I no longer find the need to go through extraordinary lengths to satisfy myself. I have come to that point of my existence when even the most mundane and non-trivial, uninteresting thing can fascinate me and most of the time, I find that I don't even to try so hard to find things that keep me interested... all I have to do is take time alone by myself and get lost. So you see, imagination needs moodling- long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering. Now aren't those just absolutely wonderful words? Moodling, dawdling ad puttering! The words sound just exactly like what they are: putzing - really doing nothing! Back when I was in college, I used to encounter this person during one of those off-schedule non-sense 45-minute breaks where you can't really do anything but sit idly and often, since I am a creature of habit, I find myself sitting on the same bench next to where she sits. She used to sit idly on the bench and just look. It was difficult for me to imagine what she was looking at all the time, so one day, I sat in the same bench where I always sat and "looked." I sat for almost the entire 45-minutes and experienced just sitting and looking and to this day, I consider her to be one of my greatest teachers. I learned to take time and just sit and look. I realized that one sees so much when one just sits and l0oks. Doing nothing... just looking. The term ended, my schedule changed and I never saw this person again yet her great wisdom in having taught me to sit and look lives on. There is a certain calm in sitting in the sidelines and not playing the leading part in a telenovela unfolding. I find myself being more interested in having less cooperation in things and in "scenes," as I have discovered that the more you get yourself out there, the more you make yourself susceptible to trouble. I prefer to refer to it as selective involvement- because finally at 27, I have managed to realize that less involvement translates to less issues and also less possibility of having issues develop. Finally, I have found myself centered and calm... and realizing I am happy to have things be that way. I think Bette Midler can describe this best when she said, "With a certain amount of introspection, triggered by age, plain old maturity, you find that it doesn't hurt so bad not to be in the eye of the hurricane."

I used to say I am a girl who loved sparks- either creating them or being in a situation that requires them... I never thought that I would come to the point that at the first sign of something igniting, I would retreat and find comfort in getting out of there. Some people might mistake this behavior as the signs of being a hermit unfolding but after speaking about it in detail, I realized that I just learned to tune out and have become more selective of the situations I place myself in. My time and energy, I think, is so important to me that I hate to waste it doing anything that would only be detrimental to me.

I think one of the perks of dating someone who is much older than me (sorry, Andrew, though I doubt that you would be reading this entry) and who is more grounded and specific about their long terms plans and goals, is that somehow it rubs off on me too and I begin to question the importance of mass confusion, the crazy world I chose (past tense!) to live in and the inevitable emptiness that it brings. I come to the conclusion that I would rather sit, watch and do nothing than be part of the leading cast of some trivial issue about who said what and why. Some people would think of this as really hard to pull off because it involves cultivating a deep passivity in your emotional life- a tender calm that would probably be very detrimental to other aspects of one's existence. Allow me to put it in a way that would be easier to understand: when faced with a conflict that would usually illicit a certain reaction from me, I do nothing because I find more merit in walking away from the nonsense rather than being in the center of it. Of course, in no way is that the same as being a lazy, useless bum... but you get the distinction. Doing nothing, the way I am using it, is about making a conscious decision not to accelerate the drama. It is about refusing to succumb to the pull of escapism, even though it is so much more appealing than the reality of life at the moment. Doing nothing means calmly asking for help when you need it, and taking what good you can receive from people who care about you, even though, in hard times, it will probably never feel like enough.

 

Doing nothing is opting for the sweetness of stillness. It is about sitting with your loneliness, making some effort to accept how bad you feel and not resorting to the kind of behavior you know deep down inside is just not a good idea. It is about doing no more than nice,quiet things that you are sure will not hurt you. It is about not pursuing histrionics and hysteria, it is about knowing that time and peace of mind will make things better. What it ultimately comes down to is this: Instead of fighting with that which you cannot control, you might as well just see it through. If you were driving and suddenly confronted by heavy rain and floods, you would not argue with the rain and demand that it sort itself out and stop attacking you; you would do the best you could to get the hell out of the way and I find the same applies to people. I find that if you try to force a resolution to some situation that only needs to be left alone to diffuse, you are only going to widen a wound. Very often, the solution has nothing to do with the problem. Reading a book, watching a good movie or taking a nap would more likely solve these little misunderstandings than more hours of babble and battle. If you just step back and go about your day. the drama will take care of itself... all you have to do is let it burn up on its own and resist the urge to have one last last word.

Don't do something about whatever crazy feelings are boxing in your head until you have first tried to just do nothing. You will be so amazed to discover that feelings are not facts, and feelings can be trusted to go away. They always do. And when they leave- probably with great alacrity if you have avoided doing anything to f**k things up further- you will feel much, much better.

- Elizabeth Wurtzel

Now, why am I talking about this in great detail? Well it is because I have decided. (for my own sake) only to do things and participate in things that I personally find compelling, interesting and worth my time. Of course, most of these involve running my business, going out with the family (either my own or my boyfriend's), certain necessary blog obligations and my personal health and fitness, which takes up most of my time now. I no longer find the need to party hard or attend some soiree because it's the weekend and I have to go out for the sake of going out. I think that would also be very evident in my next blog posts wherein you will see a more relaxed and stress-free me. If anything, I find that this is the most important thing I have learned in being in a stable relationship with someone who fascinates me so much that just hanging out and talking about random things is more fun than being in a packed bar and ending up smelling like cigarettes at the end of the night. True to form, on the day I wore this dress, I had a Sunday Family Funday over at Rockwell over lunch with his parents and his sister and her husband and kids- who I had the pleasure of finally meeting as they were visiting from abroad- and I found it so refreshing to be out and about on a Sunday, trading a hangover for wholesome fun and realizing I am not over toys after being immersed in a toy store for over an hour, which I have to say I find more appealing and interesting than having my head buried in the bathroom sink. It's all about shifting perceptions, really and leaving behind what you were accustomed to and entering a brand new stage in your life. I, for one, have to say, the view from where I am now is better... and I seriously wouldn't want it any other way.

Beaded and Embellished Ornate Dress: Sheinside.com | Studded White Sandals: Zara | Neon Pink Luggage Bag: Celine | Chain Link Woven Bracelet: Suiteblanco

xx, JL