Heart Attack (2015)
We tell ourselves that we'll do all kinds of things in the future.
Learn the guitar, get a driver's license, or just drink more water. The only problem is, we just never have the time to do, or even to try to do any of it (except the water one of course, so apologize to the temple that is your body and get a glass right now).
But suddenly, not according to your I-don't-have-the-time-for-it plan, the whole world shut down. A pandemic predicted by experts to take over the world, just happen to exist right at the moment you're about to lay down on the couch, and go through all four seasons of your favorite show for the third time and blame it all on capitalism. Now what?
"Great!" You say to yourself.
"Not the pandemic of course, I mean like, the time to.. you know... you know what I mean". You say to yourself (in a lower voice this time).
You now have all the time in the world to do everything you have ever dreamed of doing. All the hours in the world to rekindle the flame of your old hobbies. You're excited and you plan your days ahead like a child before a school trip. You bought all those brushes, and paints, and books, and pots and pans, and ukuleles, and yoga mats worth half of your monthly allowance all in one go.
"I'm going to become a much, much better person."
Then you receive your package at the front door—personally, to make sure you're the one going to the next level of your life, not your maid—and set it all up to begin your rite of passage (supported by YouTube tutorials).
You sit straight with your brush in hand, laptop on the table, and YouTube guru in both of your ears. You take a deep breath and—
Nothing.
Nothing comes out. You try squeezing out some chords, and read a few pages but nothing good comes out no matter how hard you try.
Maybe you're just tired. Today is not the day. Maybe tomorrow.
Then tomorrow arrives. You're tired again, and think maybe today is not the day, maybe tomorrow will be. Then tomorrow's tomorrow is here, and you think maybe tomorrow's today will be the day, not yesterday's today and certainly not today's today.
You turn on the tv and listen to the anchors talk about the rising cases. You go to your phone and witness everyone fighting each other on lockdowns and vaccines. You go to school (on your laptop) and listen to your teachers talk about the government's incompetence. You go to bed to try to avoid it all, but was only welcomed by your own brain, doing a presentation of everything you did and didn't do, summarized right before your eyes.
You check your phone and it's three hours before dawn. You check the date and it's six months after you downloaded all the working out videos on Youtube—just in case the power went out but you still wanted to work out. You chuckle a little, then try to look back on all the self improvements you could've made in the past six months. Then you fall asleep. Then it's another day.
Your middle-school friend just posted her engagement pictures on Instagram. She is going to be married to a Forbes-40-under-40 multi-millionaire. You scroll some more and find out your high-school friend is also getting married, and just happens to be that exact Forbes multi-millionaire. You put down your phone and think that you're doing nothing with your life. You're determined to change—starting from the little things, so you draw on your water bottle with markers to get your two liters a day—and be one of the amazing people you see on Instagram. Just like your friend, and her multi-millionaire husband. Of course, only after your second nap of the day.
Maybe you see yourself in one of these stories; or maybe you see yourself in all of it.
In an unprecedented, maybe one-in-a-lifetime event, it's easy to lose yourself. Now, more than ever, we simultaneously face bad news and sky-high achievements on a daily basis. We think all of it is our fault and blame ourselves for things out of our control. Sometimes we do something good to try to get ourselves out of the loop, but was pulled right back to our old selves. Sometimes we try to learn something new to maybe get a better hold of life, a better grip on things, as we acquire more skills, get new perspectives, and change better as we get matured by the time.
But all of the time we worry. We worry that maybe we won't get something out of this, a time where some people, get a lot out of. We worry for not being able to pay attention in class, or working out more. We worry for not being able to meet our friends and families without jeopardizing their safety. We worry that we will be left behind if we don't squeeze every minute of the day to work on ourselves.
We worry that we can't change with the changing world.
And that's okay. Trust me. I've been through it all.
In less than two years, I've tried so many things. Cooking, poetry, watercolor, aquascaping, calligraphy, interior design, digital illustrations, graphic design, yoga, film photography, weightlifting, coding, and so much more. Every time I look back on those times it's like watching a training montage of a protagonist in an action movie before facing the final boss. The only difference is, in life, there is no final boss. There is no village elder telling you the world will end if you can't master the violin in exactly one year, nor is there an alien invasion only you can stop with your decorated CV.
Learning new things, at least for me, is rarely about the things, sometimes about the new, and always about the learn. When I learn new things, it's usually driven by my curiosity, my love for similar things, or both. Having this in mind, I never consider time wasted on things I'll never do again, wasted. Because why would it be?
I gained two things:
I satisfied my curiosity; and.
I discover my love (and hatred) for more things.
And while trying new things is great, I found doing them again and again consistently is more challenging. Sure, I want to be great at everything, but sometimes I just want to breathe the morning air and bask in the sun while watching the clouds pass by. That's why a lot of the things I've done didn't stay. It's not that I don't want to do those things, it's just that it's impossible. Some things you do sometimes feel like breathing air deep into your lungs and absorbing it with every cell of your body. Other things feel like the sun warming up your skin with a hug. The rest of the things, well... they just pass by.
Which is why the things we did, we didn’t do, we will do, or never will do is okay. We don't yell at the clouds for not staying still, or the morning air for being cold. Most of the time things are just the way they are, and there's nothing wrong with that.
When you're on the wrong side of history, what can you do?
The least you could do is to cherish it. Cherish the burnt pancakes you made with your mom; cherish the homework you barely finished and almost missed the deadline for; cherish the chance for being able to wake up, stop for a moment, and take in your surroundings and place in the world.
We tell ourselves that we'll learn all kinds of things in the future. But how many of us has learned to cherish the present?
How many of us has learned how to live?
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