You Are Alive

I didn’t go to school today. No, there was no holiday or planned schedule change or any other reason other than the fact that I just didn’t want to go. So I didn’t. Which sounds pretty bad ass apart from the pendulum of emotions that existed in my conscious swinging toward the insistence that my decision was a poor one. Here’s how the conundrum of my brain panned out at 8am:

–”Why are you still in bed?”

–I’m not going to school today, I told you this last night”

–You should really get up, your teacher’s going to need you today.

–She hasn’t been ambitious about my stellar English skills this entire semester, why today?

–Well, you never know what other things that you might be missing out on. What if Shakira shows up to your school?

–Good thought, but no. I’m dedicating my time to being productive today. No more sitting around.

–…..Is that not what you’re doing now?

–I SAID I’M NOT GOING

So I wrestled myself out of bed because if I wasn’t going to school I was at least going to check something off of the To Do list. So after crossing off Get Out of Bed, I scratched off Eat Breakfast and then high fived my ambitious body. I sent out a few emails and finalized some planning for a secondary project. Wiping my hands clean I looked at the clock and sighed. It was still only 9:30am and my conscious was well aware that, yes, I could still make it to school for a few hours. I could have made a thousand excuses for why it was a good decision to stay home. For example, is it not equally wrong to impose help on someone who doesn’t want help? Like giving a cactus water every day, as I’ve learned, it just doesn’t need that much love. So let’s say, I’m taking the “cactus approach” with my teacher, just letting her bask in the sun while I hold back the watering can.

So instead of focusing on the one thing that I did not do, I started to write a list of all of the things that I did do this year. At first I really struggled. I made a goal to try and write at least 10 things that, big or small, have been real accomplishments. But once I reached 10, it quickly turned into 15. I stopped, scratched my head, chewed on the pen cap for a bit and kept going until suddenly I was numbering 20 and then eventually 30 pat-on-the-back moments. Granted, “#6 Having a Developed Prefrontal Cortex” did make the list, solely based on the fact that I’ve made more good decisions than bad this year. Also making an appearance, I listed mastering a second language, running a 10K in the Devil’s heat, surviving a 12 hour hike, starting a grant proposal, learning yoga, and acting accordingly at foreign birthday parties. I held up the list after punctuating the 30th line and nodded in recognition of my success. Scanning it over, I realized that some things were accomplished at my school while others out of school but most were unplanned, unexpected and certainly unforced, which is not to say that they didn’t flourish without persistence and hard work. Now with this list in hand I could see that, although I may have come short of my goals at school this year, I have certainly achieved unintended goals elsewhere. Whether planned or unplanned, moments of success cannot be defined by original intentions.

I felt more at ease now, but knew something was still missing. Something that would have only made the above list possible. Something not so easily achieved and yet so easily overlooked. I began to think about all of the obstacles that have stood in the way to get me where I am today; all of the decisions that I have made or could have made or simply did not make but resulted all the same in the brilliant moments of life which have unraveled themselves in my 24 years. None of which would have been possible without the simple fact of existence. So immediately after the last line, I jotted down the miraculous accomplishment “You are alive.” And I smiled.

The Mathematics of Being

A person should just be. There is no pressure in that. There are no expectations or prerequisites to being, rather an inextricable pleasure of existence. I always believed that living required a person to have and to hold; that they should seek out things to add to their collection and one day it would result in a mountainous pile referred to as character. A long list of items that ties itself off with an equals sign and at the end a person’s name is revealed. But I think it’s more than that, or maybe I should say less. It’s simple, really. A person is essentially created, not at the finish line, but in every moment. I might even retract that statement and say that a person is not created, but rather discovered. It’s a self recognition of what already exists which is ultimately most thrilling.

Discovery is a process, not to be confused with a daunting impossibility. The task of determining how a person should be is quite miraculously answered in its own question. Just be. If it feels right, do it. When it feels wrong, reconsider and make a change, and don’t forget to apologize. But never apologize to yourself because the decisions you make, however damaging, are inevitable steps forward. There is great relief in realizing that life does not require anything more than existence. In simply being all things come together. Pressure is released and worry dissipates knowing that you are enough and great things will manifest through that.

I’ve always been inspired by the people around me with such relative ease. My entire life I’ve observed how they moved and interacted and I’ve wanted to mimic their ways in an attempt to have what they had; to avoid making mistakes so that my equation total would equal perfect. But as I successfully avoided those problems, I was always blindsided by another. Instead of things adding up, I felt that they were slowly being subtracted from my envisioned total. They had already outlined the directions to life and I had neatly jotted down notes. Why, then, was I not finding success and fulfillment? Because it was not my own.

As I retracted and slowly stepped further and further away from what I thought I wanted, I gradually discovered what I was truly looking for. People and places were constantly changing but I was always the one constant in my life. Like a denominator, I remained consistent. I owed it to myself to be real, to be honest and to be incontestably sincere; to simply be. There is no grandiose math problem in solving this. Ironic, really, that it’s called a problem. When all math and logic are removed, so too are most problems, I would argue. The idea remains, but the vocabulary is remodeled into a more manageable concept known as ‘challenge’.

The realization that existence is enough is liberating in itself. When we are confident and comfortable with who we are, we stop comparing and start congratulating, we stop envying and start appreciating and our ignorance turns into interest. To those who have found success, I say congratulations. I congratulate you, but I do not want what you have. I want what I have and what I have will always be enough.

“Simply the thing I am shall make me live”
– William Shakespeare