NOTE: In the last post, I embedded the link for the article wrong and had a couple of mistakes. I’ve corrected it in the letter, but to excuse you from having to go there again, you can click here. Sorry!
It’s quite ironic that I wrote to you about doing nothing last week, given that these past few day were slightly chaotic. Like a bumblebee flying from one place to the other gathering pollen, I spent 4 days stressing from corner to corner, rushing to apply for a major in marketing management until the deadline this friday. For the past 5 years, every other day during our summer break, me and a long time friend arrange to go for morning walks, which forces me to wake up rather early. Since I’m around the house much more, a lot of chores fall on my lap, such as vacuuming, cleaning the dust, changing bedsheets, hanging clothes out to dry. All in all, I became an active person, a stressed out student and a housemaid.
It served me nicely though, since it was a clear, strong contrast. I was able to hold both instances, one where I want to force myself to do nothing, and one where I must force myself to do everything. In each hand, I compare them, side to side, and can draw the differences. I’ll share with you now all the fruits I’ve reaped.
I think I’ve gotten so used to being on edge that the lack of anxiety doesn’t feel normal anymore, and that is a gutting, heart wrenching confession. Life is not a mess, life is mess. and, like so many others, I tend to fight back against it instead of embracing it. Desperately, I jumble and crumble and beat myself up if I can’t keep track with it, if I can’t always be on time, if I can’t do all the tasks, if I can’t answer and communicate with all my friends. To make matters worst, I’m worrying about the next thing constantly, to the point I can’t root my feet in the present. To the point that fun isn’t fun, because I can’t enjoy it without having my mind elsewhere. Fear holds me back.
But, at the same time, it drives me forward. Just like guilt. They are the powerhouse of my cells, and leave me nonattentive, ajar, but also put me on edge and make me do the things I must do. They’re what imprison my mind in a lost, reckless far away kingdom. Fate is in our hands, our future is in our hands. Except it isn’t. Except it is. And it’s terrifying. I question everything as if that will make things easier, like a little kid with a stick picking at a pile of leaves. My ways of doing things, insecurities, how I’ve changed, just like I told you in the last letter. I’m certain answers that will resolve everything will fall on my lap. That will explain to me clearly and thoroughly why I procrastinate so much when I could be working all the time and get a lot more done, why it feels so wrong to enjoy time by myself and moments not doing much, if anything at all; why I can’t seem to pay as much attention, why I can’t just stop for one minute and do nothing, fully, completely.
But, here’s something else: part of growing up is understanding that you won’t always have a reason, and that that won’t kill you. Or rather, that you can’t let it completely drown you. It won’t always make sense, it doesn’t have to. The last thing this world promised us is that it would make sense. This doesn’t mean it will be easy. It’s only natural, for us to try and find a justification, so we can have something to hold on to, so it will be easier to navigate through the dark and unknown and uncomfortable.
There’s something I tell myself a lot whenever I’m more overwhelmed than usual: you know more than you think you do. I realise it now, that it’s kind of my lifebuoy, my assurance that I’ll get through whatever life puts in my plate. I’m not saying I know everything. I’m putting my faith on chance, on the certainity that I’ll figure this out, like I’ve always done somehow before. I guess I just need a little bit more trust in this truth.
I notice how my leg unconsciously starts bouncing, how I fiddle with my fingers and nit-pick skin without meaning to, but nowadays, I try not to beat myself to the curb. What’s the use? I notice it happening and, gently, calmly, I stop it. Maybe I’ll sigh, or shrug, or grunt, take a deep breath, sometimes 3. It seems that the way to not run away from myself isn’t to walk the other way. It’s to stop. The discomfort might not go away completely, but it gets quieter, fainter. Who knew you could face your problems without going through an inquiry.
That’s one part of what I’ve gathered. Another one is that every single time we auto titulate any relaxation moment as lazy, we are committing a deep mistake. Hobbies, fun instances, and such activities that might’ve crossed your mind, aren’t an end to a mean, they are the end itself. Sure, they are a way to find out more about ourselves, what we like or dislike, to recharge, but what I mean to say is that any activity that we see as leisure shouldn’t be, at least always, seen as a payoff. Like the internet loves to say: it is what it is. They don’t need to be a little treat you give yourself because you worked hard, and they shouldn’t be something you need to prove yourself worthy so you can enjoy. Even if, growing up, that’s how we’ve been taught: that we can only watch tv after doing our homework, or play after washing the dishes, etc.
To do nothing is to let go. Which means it’s to stop controlling. You can’t possibly relax when you’re fixated in dominating a situation, a person, a goal. There are stakes involved, a sense of responsibility. And, as I like to believe, a lot of courage, to both carry on with a task until its very end and to release it, have it flow its own course. Here’s a guarantee: regardless of the task and what we want to do with it, if we obsess over doing it well, we might end up doing nothing - but not the nothing we’re aiming at here. It’s the kind of nothing that exhausts you and shames you, not the one that makes you feel glad to be alive, happy to be on this earth. ‘Total idleness’, this state where I am comfortably and absolutely doing nothing, for example, won’t be reached as long as we’re worrying if this position we’re laying in really is the cosiest one we can achieve. If I obsess over how uncomfortable it is to not spending each minute talking when I’m with a friend on a walk, I’ll never appreciate the silence that could be pleasant, that could let my friend lead a conversation and open up to me.
I believe there’s a lot of ways we can do this. There are still questions and topics I didn’t visit from the last letter still. I’ll meet you next week and bring my findings, if i get any.
Thank you for reading delicate, and I hope it wasn’t too confusing to sail through this letter.
delicacies of the week
This illustration on twitter, which made me smile
This picture I found about making life easier for yourself. A lot of the times we put ourselves through hell without needing to.
songs of this week : this life by vampire weekend, all day by george, and horn by nick drake | delicate’s playlist