Today is the first in a long while that I've had unbridled free time on my hands. For the first 45 minutes of this newfound freedom, I walked around the Kroger by my house in aimless circles. Chip aisle, frozen foods, greeting cards. Kombucha, pastries, cat food.
I even actually browsed the small wall of "best sellers" that are just poorly plotted romance novels the size of my palm. Some of them are also religious texts, others are diet cookbooks. Some biographies might fall into the realm of both, depending on who you are.
So, in lack of pursuit of anything, I walk half a mile to the lake I live by, an incredibly wonderful detail of my life that I don't appreciate often enough. I use a tablecloth as a picnic blanket and I crack the spine of a paperback that's been collecting dust on my shelf. I have one, good sunny day. Two hours of regular time. Bare shoulders and knees in the sun. Bug spray and sunscreen and actual sweat on the back of my neck.
Today I was grateful to have the company of some really weirdly social ducks and regular douchebag geese. I read 72 pages of The Catcher in the Rye and ate half a container of blueberries. This is the happiest I've been on my own in a while. I walk back home with music playing from my phone speaker in the front pocket of my overalls, trying to decide which song would be the best closing credits for this feeling. I settle on Crop Circles by Odie Leigh.
Afternoons like this may be a universal fix for most of life's unwritten troubles. The stuff you wrap around your head and hands over and over again, only to do nothing with it. Things that make you wander grocery store aisles pretending to be heavily immersed in the details of kettle corn nutrition labels.
I've led a comfortable life for the most part. But I've moved through this life uncomfortably fast. I have never not had my eye on a deadline. Never not started something without knowing what comes next. I've never not felt occupied.
But I've also rarely felt fulfilled. I don't think to catch my breath long enough to realize that my lungs may be on fire. Life, to this point, has felt like one long stretch of a chase. There has been so much going, but now that I've hit a dead spot, I don't know where. I did the things! Highschool, college, part time jobs in between and a constantly shifting five-year-plan for every moment I can't live yet. I know there's no right way through life, but I did the closest I could imagine.
We're a third of the way through this year, by the way. A full third. You're going to do this two more times and then it'll be another new year. The first time I told myself that, I felt the need to skip to December. To talk to a Mariam from months ahead and beg that "it" is all figured out, not even being able to really define what "it" is. I just hoped she'd know by then, at least.
The second time I told myself that, book on knee and face in sun, I felt a little mournful. Where did January and February and March and April go? Did I sleep in too late, miss all the early bird memories? Did I call it a night too early and live too closely within the lines of my comfort? Or did I have too many early mornings and late nights for the sake of the wrong type of productivity? How was I having FOMO for my own life, my own four months that I played out entirely to my accord? I could've done anything and been done with it now, and I felt like on this Thursday at 2 p.m. I had nothing to show for it besides being here.
The third time, I got distracted by six ducklings tripping over their feet to get at the blueberries I had spilled earlier and mistakenly smushed under my heel. I thought of my friend Olivia and the one time we went paddleboarding together, how she had used a bright yellow knife to slice off parts of a mango for the ducks that were following behind us. I thought of the way my dad offers our cat scraps of bread to sniff just for the hell of it. I thought about how none of these things will show for anything besides their original curiosity in four months-- and how incredible that is. How wonderfully human it is that I can recall them now, that I lived them then.
So much of my life has been spent in anticipation for the long term-- the big ticket items that I thought would be the right price to feel full of it. Full of something cherished and warm and loved and proud. I've spent a third of the year waiting for the weekend to end so I could get on what I'd need done by the next one. It's not the fault of anyone, really. I think it's how we survive in the type of world we've built around us. There's a pace to keep up with, and to stumble feels like losing your place in line for a prize that you're told to need.
But there's got to be some time to remind ourselves of our own human nature. Our need for seemingly meaningless in-betweens that don't strive for perfection-- just goodness.
The familiarity of this concept doesn't go unrecognized by me. I've been mumbling it to myself since high school in the worlds of Mary Oliver's poems. Over and over again, the sound of wild geese proclaiming their place in the family of things and reminding you of the simplicity of yours. Anyone who has ever known me, knows this.
There is so much further to know through the simple kindness of being. Unthinkable truths to find when you stop looking for them. Life cannot be a prize to seek or a sin to repent for-- it has to be something that happens to you.
No amount of control in the world can orchestrate the feeling that you think you need. No destination exists for the home you've been wanting to return to. No metaphor can explain what I'm trying to say.
It's not a string of words that will fix everything-- in truth, nothing gets fixed through this. You're just turning it, seeing it at a different angle and maybe you'll like it more that way. You may still be wrapping the same troubles around your head and hands, but you're not blinded and bound by them. You never were. Do nothing with them again, with some intention in that, and maybe they'll become companions to your misery.
One good, sunny day. Give yourself that. Mull it over and make no decision. Leave emptyhanded. Ask for very little and accept even less. The blueberries you crush while setting up your picnic are the ones that will be sweetest, and you won't even be the one eating them.
If that doesn't work, there's always the ducks to feed.
Signed,
Mariam
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