I think a part of me was searching for rainbows and unicorns, fireworks, an explosive feeling that would propel me to a state of nirvana that was the color and quality of peacock feathers evoking the same kind of decadence.
Instead it was like a simple tap on the shoulder after your mind has drifted off for a moment as you wait in line at a coffee shop and the person behind you very quietly, gently, and self consciously alerts you that it is your turn.
The message:
“Hey sugar, your a little bit sort of kind of in a state of bliss.”
I wasn’t even doing anything special, actually it was something that a few weeks back I had dreaded. After a mistaken purchase, I realized that I was going to have to either buy something new that I didn’t want or need, or put in some time to correct my mistake. Going through door number two, I was able to be in nature in a way that I had not before: sitting still for an extended period of time.
Through the regimentation of schooling, the regimented structured expectations of a job, and the constant nagging feeling of not achieving at the same pace as one’s peers and are thus somehow failing as a young adult, there had never really been an opportunity to just sit and be. To live a moment not on a schedule, not working towards a goal on a perceived horizon, to sit with myself and see myself not through a lens of expectations, through no lens really at all, to just observe with compassion.
And it was an accidental observation. Like opening the bathroom door when someone is already occupying the space, I was embarrassed in that I’d been so in a hurry I’d never seen the signs that pointed to who I was. I hadn’t recognized my own existence outside of socially constructed timelines and expectations.
In a stolen moment of not trying to buy items; going on adventures; pursuing pleasure in a moment, in the body, or an altered state; in a moment of not seeking I’d accidentally stumbled upon the part of myself that held no expectations, that had no to do lists, that thought in the moment. And as I gazed awkwardly at myself through the, proverbial, ajar bathroom door – in a moment akin to realizing that you haven’t caught someone pants down on the toilet but in fact just as they were about to dry their hands and they tell you not to worry, that you’d lucked out and the stars were not aligned for the moment to be an embarrassing one – I realized that I was happy, like blissfully so just sitting outside listening to early morning bird song.
With a similar shock and embarrassment, the realization dawned that happiness could be something so simple and unassuming as just allowing the self to be without judgement. To exist being honest to the self.
So just as shock and embarrassment may turn to compulsive courtesy, I held space for the moment of bliss, and I expressed gratitude as one does in a slightly confusing situation and I apologized for not realizing sooner that sex, money, and stuff wouldn’t solve my problems.
And just like that, the moment passed. Moving on, as time does, to the next event. And as the moment passed, I knew the key was being unapologetic and honest with myself, and holding space for me to be the person I truly was, the person that I’d only find when I stopped running around trying to both apologize for existing my own personal truth and to please a version of myself that I perceived to be true that was created as a result of social expectations.
Caia Rose 