For centuries I sat, those asinine faces staring back at me. My position, immovable.
With every ounce of my strength I wished for a different view.
The smoke finally cleared and my wish had been granted.
I realized my view would change. I hadn’t presumed I would not have moved an inch.
This sums me up on so many levels.
It is almost November and the weather is going to great lengths to remind us of the impending torture of unpredictable temperatures and precipitation for the next thirty plus days. Today was a glowing example of that. The remnants of Hurricane Patricia swirled hungrily around our little town and brought with them the feeling of doom that always precedes winter. The rain fell sideways and the South West wind systematically unzipped our coats to leave us feeling exposed to the elements.
On my drive home from work, watching the storm-laden sky become even darker, I could think of nothing more than crawling into a cave of blankets in my living room and allowing myself to succumb to the heat that would soon be escaping from my baseboard heaters. The thought of having to cook a full dinner did not impress me at all so I visited the grocery store and purchased a warm, fragrant pre-roasted chicken.
There is nothing better than comfort food on a cold, grey night. The pungent smell of the chicken permeated my kitchen as I boiled some potatoes and made a somewhat deconstructed stuffing. Onions and celery were left to saute with some bacon as the potatoes were mashed into submission. I usually love to add some flare to the presentation of my meals, but comfort food speaks loudly and needs neither pomp nor circumstance to assert its message.
The food was delicious. My heaters obliged by taking the chill out of the air but the meal lacked a certain something. I love my solitude. I enjoy my own company and I have several friends, one close friend in particular, who admire me for being so content on my own. But my “Thrifty Thursday” Chicken (as the store labelled it), my mashed potatoes and bread-less stuffing would have tasted much better had I been able to share it with someone special.
There is much to be said about living on your own. That privilege of freedom defines gratitude better than a thousand dictionaries. But the joy of being in a room with someone who helps accentuate your happiness is immeasurable. Whether those moments are shared in silence or lost in a cacophony of laughter and endless conversation, those are the moments that create memories. And those are the moments that can sometimes make solitude feel a little more like loneliness.
I lived through a very tumultuous marriage. It was a great lesson for me but, in mathematical terms, the product of my relationship was divided by the sum of our differences and eventually created a result that lacked a remainder. There were so many variables and so few constants that our bond was doomed from the beginning. I should have been the operator but, instead, I felt like a fraction of my true self.
The formula for a successful bond relies on a form of symmetry. The arrangement of the most fundamental parts of our lives need to align to create a true collaborative bond. You cannot expect to live a happy life in a paradox. You cannot create an answerable question without supplying the linear equation that gives you those answers. All of the pieces of your life need to make you happy, not just the sum of the happy parts. Going through the motions and cancelling out the negative parts of the bigger picture subtracts from the value of each day. Sure you will make mistakes along the way, but those mistakes should add to your education and not take away from your self-worth.
I lived that equation. The perfect number may exist in the glossary of mathematical terms but it does not thrive in real life. Perfection takes effort and, at the end of the exam, all of the negatives never added up to a positive for me. I was in the wrong equation and it was glaringly evident. It was time to subtract myself and cut my losses.
Once my math exam was over I learned to breathe freely again and I felt empowered by my freedom. I learned to enjoy my own company more than I ever had and it was liberating. What I currently perceive as solitude some would call loneliness but they don’t have the numbers to back up their hypothesis.
I now spend my days knowing that I passed that math test and that my final grade has truly helped me balance my life in a way that I never thought possible. And now that I have erased the errors of my past, I am free to create a new formula for my happiness. I can choose to remain constant or I can choose to add or subtract the things that will bring me the most happiness. Regardless of what I choose, I know I will only add the people who fill the gaps in my life and not those who subtract from my bliss.
My last post seemed to send an abundant amount of energy into the ethers. I awoke with a very sore throat and headache the morning following the post about Newton’s laws and found my health steadily declining throughout the morning. My energy was sapped, I was, in fact, lethargic, and my legs felt like lead as they slowly carried me to my car after I was told to go home and have a nap.
I crawled into bed at just before 2:00 pm with an alarm set to call in to work to let them know how I was. My physical situation at 4:30 pm was no better so I was told to stay home and rest. I don’t think any of us had a clue what that really meant. My exhaustion was so far advanced that I actually slept for 24 hours!
Newton was correct in his theory that an object at rest tends to remain at rest. There were a few times I became partially conscious, only to realize my dog was three inches from my face. She was undoubtedly checking to see if I was still breathing and, once she ascertained my level of cognizance, asked me to let her out. With a few breaks during that 24-hour period for bathroom trips for myself and my dog, I finally really awoke at 2:40 pm the next day.
Had I known the power of a wish in the Blogosphere could be granted so quickly, I may have rethought my wish for a lottery win instead of a 24-hour mini-coma. At least I feel much more rested….and there is always a wish for the next lottery draw if anyone up there is still listening!!
Admittedly, I am going through withdrawal. I have not gone on a cleanse nor have I given up an addiction but I find myself recently emancipated from certain friends who truly know my soul and I feel somewhat lost.
Cultivating a friendship from a distance becomes easier as more time passes. The initial shock of distress subsides and the feeling of isolation is adapted to and accepted. But when that friendship is reanimated at a one-on-one level it makes the strain of separation that much more painful when those friends have to leave again.
I had effortlessly assimilated to a quiet lifestyle and one that I enjoy very much. I had been very content to come home to an idyllic piece of property in a secluded location that I share only with my dog. I had become ensconced in a life of post-work anonymity. And then the axis of my world shifted.
After decades of being complacent, I found my mind wandering. After years of feeling satiated, I found myself yearning for something I had not known I was seeking. The thought of a different lifestyle became abundantly clear and my mind was in turmoil.
I have not invited any of these conceptions into the realm of my existence at this point, but knowing I have the opportunity to entertain these strange thoughts is exciting. Having the ability to welcome these curious ideas into my life is liberating. And just thinking that there is another chapter of my life possibly waiting to be written is extremely enticing.
“We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.” ~ Francios de La Rochefoucauld
I want to think I have not lost myself in the process only to discover I have missed out on writing that new chapter. I wish to believe that the well of ink still exists and will allow me to continue creating the story that is my life. And I will never know if that story continues here or exists in another place until I become brave enough to turn that next page.
“If I am what I have and if I lose what I have, who then am I?” ~ Erich Fromm
I sold my gazebo in the spring. It was a beautiful structure but grossly underutilized. Now when I look out across my lawn I see nothing but nature. Apart from what looks like a crop circle where the gazebo once stood, it is simple, it is unencumbered and it now more honestly represents the way I live my life.
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I am not the sum of my belongings. I appreciate the eclectic and not the expensive. I am more comfortable in second-hand jeans and a sweatshirt than I am in a designer dress. I do not own a coordinating set of anything. My furniture blends but it doesn’t match and the colors inside of my house reflect the colors outside of my house. Greens and browns soothe me and that will never change. It is how I grew up, it is how I live and it is how I thrive.
Life, for me, is about the simple things. I am not inundated by random possessions, I am not overwhelmed by clutter and I am not constricted by a collection of things that are meant to impress anyone other than myself.
I tend to be a homebody and spend more time with my dog after work than I do in public places. I like to think I am not anti-social but merely selectively social.
Finding happiness in the simple things brings me a sense of peace. I am not constantly striving to keep up with any trends other than my own. I am not seeking a status that I never initially wanted and I live by my own rules.
Happiness has a unique definition to each person who has the luxury of finding that elusive feeling. Mine is a rudimentary definition, explained with simple words and carried out in the most uncomplicated way. I live honestly, I live sincerely and I live knowing that I will never be defined by what I have, but rather by who I am.
Working in the hospitality business goes hand in hand with working strange and long hours. I can adapt to the hours but my dog is the one who takes the brunt of my lifestyle. I will never leave her outside on a chain to battle the elements – she is firmly ensconced in our home, lazily spending her hours watching the wildlife from the comfort of my bed. I have several people who are more than willing to come over and let her out during the day because she is such a happy dog and, for me, having her be the excuse to leave work for thirty minutes is wonderful. She is never a prisoner in her home – she is akin to a wealthy home owner with servants to look after her every whim.
During these long days, I often wonder how she bides her time. Is she going through kitchen cabinets? Has she mastered the satellite remote? Does she inventory my refrigerator? But each day when I get home from my struggle to survive my sometimes 10-14 hour days, she is there to greet me and nothing in the house seems out-of-place. Until a few months ago…..
I returned home from my usual work day and I was greeted by the reassuring excitability that I have come to expect. The house, as usual, was completely intact. The garbage was untouched and the serene ambiance wrapped its arm around my shoulder and pulled me into its embrace to welcome me home.
My attention was immediately diverted to the duvet cover and what seemed to be a single article of clothing bunched up in the middle of the bed. It wasn’t shredded and remained intact, however the entire shirt was extremely damp. She had been licking my shirt for the better part of who knows how long, focusing on the remnants of deodorant I had left behind. The baffling thing was, had I not known where the shirt was originally, I would never have known how she got to it. My closet is masked by a cloth shower curtain that poses itself as a makeshift door. Somehow, she was able to remove the shroud of the curtain, gingerly lift the shirt from the pile of laundry in the basket and replace the curtain so nobody would catch on to her devious plot.
As much as I miss her during my day, it struck me at that moment how much she truly missed me during her day. The writing was on the wall, or in this case on the bed. My scent comforted her during her lonely day and it made my heart ache to realize that fact. We have a very close bond and one that she feels as much as I do.
I can only take solace in the fact that my work days will soon become shorter and more structured. My time with her will increase and perhaps her need to be close to my deodorant-saturated shirts will abate somewhat because I will be here in the physical form and not just the odoriferous form.
And who knows, perhaps in the meantime I can save myself a fortune on laundry.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
I am going to make the gross assumption that everyone has thought, at least once, about what they would do if they won a big sum of cash. I just had a dream the other night that I was handed a cheque for $500,000.00. When I woke up, my brain rapidly began to compile a list of my desires and the list was (not surprisingly) simple.
I want this house on a big piece of land that affords me privacy, sunsets and a vast array of nature. I want the peepers to chirp me to sleep at night and I want the caress of the morning sun to touch my cheek while I rouse. I want to sit on that top deck and enjoy my morning coffee while I watch the dogs chasing squirrels. I want to glance to my right and see the roof of my garage which also houses the space I can use to dabble in wood-work.
This house has always been the house I want to build. It is small, charming and has a big kitchen so I can cook and bake to my heart’s content. A picture of this house is pinned to a board on my refrigerator. Each time I look at it, I send that wish into the universe hoping that some day my wish will be turned into a reality.
Many times I have closed my eyes and pictured myself sitting in my eclectic, but not expensive, living room. The candles on the dining room table are lit, soft music plays in the background and the smell of roasting lamb permeates every room in the house. The wine is a perfect temperature and every now and then I urgently run upstairs to my writing room to document my latest burst of creativity.
My happiness is not waiting for me in distant geographical locations. My happiness does not consist of collections of things. My happiness lies within those four walls and the grass and trees that will surround it. I want to love everything about my life, I want to live deliberately and I want to do it in this house.
What would be your wish if you were able to afford anything you wanted?
Today is one of the days I would change in a heartbeat if I had the chance.
I will be going from this…
….to this….
I am a small town girl down to my very core. I was in a large city for two years when I went to college but the pull of a much less hectic life was too strong for me to ignore. I yearn for the peace and quiet. I am a creature of habit and crave the sanctity of my home and my solitude.
Toronto is a wonderful urban center for those who need the pulse of the city to echo within them. It is a world unto itself but it is not a world where I will ever feel like I belong. Today I will do something that is not on a list of any of my favorite things. Today I will do my best to blend in among the crowd. Today I will lose myself in the endless pavement and rows of buildings competing to reach the sky. Today I will be that fish out of water, desperately wanting to get back to my lake. Today I will hunger for the shelter of my home, the welcoming embrace of my couch and the comfort of the presence of my dog.
Today is one of the days I would change in a heartbeat if I had the chance.
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