I could get used to this. Sitting at some remote location (alright, Phuket is not that remote) typing some words, having woken up at the break of dawn.
This was the life I used to envision. Perpetually in motion, armed with just a backpack and my laptop, creating on the go.
But yesterday while looking at the beautiful empty horizon of Naiyang beach, I had an epiphany. I was never meant to have one distinct persona, one single vision of a life.
I was meant to alternate in cycles. Some people could work on one single thing as their entire focus of their lives, Jiro the sushi master comes to my mind. I need to leave in order to stay, to be rooted in order to travel, to be alone in order to participate, to work in order to play, to be selfish in order to be generous, to give in order to take, to self-destroy in order to come alive.
My source of troubles comes from having the wrong expectation of thinking I will find that one thing, the one person, the one place, that one way of living. I mistook comfort for happiness, prestige for validation, dissatisfaction with myself for misery. I sought to define myself a certain way, not understanding that I am not one distinct persona but a multitude of them. My personas evolve, yet my mind doesn’t catch up, constantly feeling the disconnect as I assumed I was a certain type of person, only to realize I have grown out of my own assumptions a long time ago.
I have let go of things subconsciously, without realizing as my conscious self tried to hang on to them. My priorities had been reordered internally, yet my external self was still executing them in the wrong order. I wanted to do so many seemingly important things, only to understand that if they were truly important I would have done them already. My subconscious has a way of making snap decisions, waiting for my conscious self to catch up. And I am left feeling confused all the time.
This is when I need all that quiet in the world to sync up with myself. I write, in order to wait for these epiphanies to magically appear, as though I knew of them before making the decision to write. In truth, they appear on the screen and in my consciousness as I type , through some magical osmosis as though my thoughts are really consciously constructed.
I stared at the quiet of Naiyang beach yesterday with the knowing that I would not have truly appreciated this sight had I not arrived from a place of chaos and disorder. Yet I understand too, with a tinge of possible regret, that every image of peace will eventually mutate. This is the natural order of life, every bit of life has to go through decay in order to be part of the next phase of life.
I am hoping for myself that I will learn to appreciate decay when it is taking place, not as an afterthought. I find it very difficult to recondition myself into disassociating pain with loss, or even pain with sadness, or even pain as bad per se.
If I could learn to appreciate decay in its full splendor, I could perhaps truly live in the beauty of the now – that even as I go through the massively uncomfortable decay of my old self, I will be able to lie in anticipation of the new that will inevitably arrive.
Time. Such a paradox. Some things require its own patient timing yet we need some form of urgency to make the most out of our lives. Yet when we try too much and too hard, we cease to let nature flow.
I think I may understand what it means to be truly alive, when I am capable of being in tune with the obvious paradoxes of life, that perhaps two opposing views are not mutually exclusive, but very much integral in sustaining the innate existence of the other.
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Sometimes I can’t help but question (yes, I question myself a lot, so much that my mind goes in circles all the time, it is pretty much a miracle I remain relatively sane) my own motives for publishing a public journal. If I truly write for myself, then it wouldn’t make a difference if it is private, isn’t it? What do I seek to achieve by publishing these repetitive seemingly inane thoughts? Am I secretly egoistic (alright, not so secret) by wishing that people can relate to my words?
Today while eating breakfast and checking my twitter timeline, I had another epiphany (yup, full of those lately, this is why we cannot be workaholics, we need to be lazy in order to be effective at work). I was smiling genuinely from my heart when I read about other people’s public sharing of their journeys. It was then I realized, I am still writing for myself, because when I share what I write, I am lighting the way for other people to be themselves – when they share what they write, they light up the way for me to have the courage to be myself.
When more of us have the courage to be ourselves, to forge our own paths, perhaps we could collectively light up this world.
Still selfish, yet still intricately connected to the collective consciousness, still not mutually exclusive.