We write for the same reason we meditate don’t we? To work through things. Thoughts, feelings. Well, I suppose I shan’t speak for the collective when I really mean that I write, I meditate to work through things. Things that are difficult, heavy. Resentments, feelings of inadequacy. Sorrow, longing. For the past ten or so years, this has been the primary driver of both my writing and quest for mindfulness. To give these big, heavy feelings a shape, in order to remind myself that everything with a shape, ultimately, disintegrates.
But what happens if, on a day like today, the big feelings are joyous, expansive? This is the position I find myself in, on Monday the 28th of April. Allow me to illustrate my position for you. I am sitting by a window in the sun in a cafe in the West Village. It’s 10 AM, I’m drinking a jasmine tea. The neighborhood is free from tourists and packs of raucous brunch-goers, finance bros are tucked away in Midtown skyscrapers. I’m reminded of why I, five years ago, fell in love with this pocket of New York. I’m wearing my favorite jeans. I have a bag full of books next to me. The window is open because it’s 70 degrees. I feel light, so light, and it’s not just because of the weather.
You see, the reason that I am here, in this cafe, at 10 AM on a Monday, blissfully sipping my herbal tea in the sun, is because I am unemployed. Friday was my last day of work in a job I devoted the better half of my 20s thus far to, woefully underpaid but mostly not actively unhappy in. I will pause here to address any concerns. I am not, however much I might wish to be, a person who quits their job without another in wait. I start anew on Monday; new position, new company. But until then, I allow myself one whole week of pretend. Pretending that my life is just this—dressing up to sit at a cafe, writing, reading. What are you doing on your week off? people asked. Devoting myself to my studies. What are my studies? New York in the spring. The way the light shifts and changes in my living room throughout the course of an afternoon. The fictional universe of my new book. The sway of the tulips on Fifth Ave. Oh, heaven.
You see, I couldn’t sleep last night, I was so excited. I finally gave up trying at 7 AM and sprung out of bed to clean out my closet like a maniac, getting rid of clothes I haven’t worn in years to make room for the better things I tell myself I will find, little gatherer that I am, this week. This morning urge to clean, to make way for the new, takes me by surprise being that my morning routine has, unwaveringly, looked like this for the past six months:
wake up, journal for 20-30 minutes
meditate for 10-20 minutes
read or stretch for ~10 minutes
make oatmeal
I do all of these things, formulaically, devotionally, before I even consider anything else. People tell me: you are so disciplined. This compliment (is it a compliment?) has never sat right with me, though. Because I am not disciplined. I am dependent. My morning routine is a recipe. Tried and true, measurements exact, on how to be able to live with my big, heavy feelings. Don’t you understand? I want to tell them. I need this. You see, I tend to get swept up in my emotions, washed out to sea. I feel things to a degree that feels unbearable, suffocating. And I’ve quit the things that used to rid me of the weight of these feelings—painful, necessary process that it was—scrolling, caffeine, alcohol, male validation. Learned to stop numbing and to start putting space between myself and the weight through writing, through sitting in silence and observing my thoughts until they become a thing separate from me. So my morning routine…it’s more means for survival than anything to do with willpower.
But today, for a change, the Big Feelings aren’t painful. And so this morning, as I tossed my too-small children’s size 10-12 linen pants (the only ones I could find within my budget last summer) onto my growing donation pile, I could not meditate, could not journal.
Because today, I want the sun and the flowers and the garden, empty and glorious on a Monday afternoon. I want to read fiction novels like it’s my job. I want to shop in stores without crowds and to write freely from the cafe. I want to clean my apartment and to try that new restaurant in Brooklyn, the one that’s not so new anymore. I want it to last forever.
And this feeling, this excitement—it’s big, too. It’s taken me up, far and away as I sit on my gilded stool typing, blissfully free from societal obligations for the week. And the thing is, as much as my sorrow and my longing is transient, this feeling is too, isn’t it? Next week I will be gainfully employed again, albeit this time more lucratively. The weather will, inevitably, turn and the hordes will once again storm the now peaceful neighborhood. My tea will grow cold and my new pants will start to look out of trend in the light of a new season. Tutto passa, it all passes, whether or not we want it to.
I hesitated to write down my joyous feelings of today for the same reason I couldn’t bring myself to meditate. Out of fear that, like putting space between myself and my heavy, cataclysmic feelings, these grounding practices would only alert me to the transience of this happiness, and therefore its inevitable dissolution.
But perhaps that’s what we need to fully appreciate the good when it comes, isn’t it? There I go, speaking for the collective yet again. Maybe that’s what I need. So that when it inevitably comes crashing down again, I don’t crash along with it. So that I’m suspended somewhere above; above pain and above pleasure. Experiencing both, not losing myself in either.
nice one
“What are my studies? New York in the spring.” This is lovely. It was such a treat to read a post by someone and be like “oh wow that’s my most favorite thing too! I hardly ever hear people talk about it!”