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Yesterday was a really long day that I was quite exhausted by the end of it to write this blog post. It was the kind of day when you don’t have time to catch up with your thoughts and you are operating on auto-pilot, doing the things that you know how to do, getting from pillar to post, and meeting so many people virtually that if you did so physically, you will become overwhelmed. When I got into bed, I read 10 pages of a book I am reading and wrote 3 lines about love which I intended to post, but did not. I couldn’t bring myself to do more than this.
Not only did the continuous activity exhaust me, so did a conversation with someone at work which was very emotionally draining. I feel like I spend a lot of time failing to be the perfect idea of other people; whether it be a corporate doll or a married woman or a well-adjusted member of a sick society, I am unable to be any of these. I fail to meet people’s expectations, and in my weak moments, I think about how to be likeable, or how to fit in, when most importantly, I should be thinking about how to be true to who I am. And then I wonder, who am I, really?
Should I spend time introspecting what it means to feel happiness or even love, or as I considered it – to truly be who I am? Are we an accumulation of thoughts being fed to us and parts in systems that were not designed for us? I thought about all this and then simply put these thoughts aside because it had been a long day, and I read ten pages of a book. The scene I read had writers talking about stories that they had written for a writing program’s assignment in which each of them had to feature an animal. While reading it, I couldn’t recall the last time I had done a guided writing exercise, so maybe I will bake in something into this Fourteen Day Challenge.
I also saw a reel on the human brain where a woman was explaining how our brain requires us to physically do different things in order to for it to cleanse itself and stay healthy; and the fact that most of us now spend our whole day in front of screens, we are unable to give our brain sufficient time to clean itself thus causing it to be stuck into patterns causing our brain cells to become unhealthy. Humans were not naturally designed to sit in one place and stare into screens the entire day, as we all know.
Then, I slept without having thought about love as a feeling but only as a concept. As a concept in a way that love doesn’t have the universality of hurt. We all know what hurt feels like, a knot in our chest and a dry throat, perhaps. Or anger feels like a whirlwind inside the head and blocked tears. But love is different to different people, situations, relationships; and it is a source of creativity and wonder. On days that become so overcrowded with the shenanigans of cultural obligations, I find that the space that has traditionally belonged to wonder and curiosity, now belongs to a tedium that masquerades as purpose.
And on such days, if I can remember, I think about what it means to love and be loved, to know that our lives are aspirational of love of all that is naturally occurring and feeds our souls rather than validation. It is this validation that I want to stop seeking every time I feel less than enough, or when I am unable to meet others’ expectations, or when I have failed and even if no one else does, I should give myself another chance.
amarllyis 