It’s Christmas time and some how I keep feeling like it’s summer (which I hate after about 1.3 weeks). This may be due to the 80 degree weather we are having here… I can’t even go into how angry this makes me. One time, just ONE TIME I would like to have a white Christmas and some how this year it’s 80 degrees. GRR! “Next year”, I keep telling myself, “next year”. Next year I’ll have more snow than I’ll know what to do with!!
Somehow though, while I am not thankful for this weather, for some reason I have been happy about the simplest things over the past few days. I am VERY easily pleased as it is so it’s not surprising that things like this make me this happy but they have been in abundance the last couple of days and have helped me smile while being sleepy and stressed… The list of happy things is as follows:
1.) I love when I pull a rubber-band off of something and it falls on my desk in a shape that is so similar to a treble clef. It’s like a little musical reminder of how lucky I am to have music in my world. It makes me happy.
2.) I love when someone calls on my work phone and knows exactly what they need, how they need to say it, or who they need to talk to. It makes me happy.
3.) I love when my phone goes bliiiing ity bling bling with a text message and I “know” who it’s from and then it’s from someone totally unexpected. It’s a reminder that someone was thinking of me, when I wasn’t around, and it’s a surprise all in one. It makes me happy.
4.) I love when I get new music. Music from a movie that moved me or music from someone because they loved me that much. Most people would think that it’s a cop out on spending money kind of gift if someone makes them a CD. I personally think it’s the best. For someone to hear the beauty and life that is music and think of me while doing so… What a lovely thing to have exist attached to my name and for them to give me music that they own, that they have and love… how special. New music makes me VERY happy.
5.) I love when I am looking for something, usually irrelevant, on the internet and google images gives me this random picture that has nothing to do with anything I am looking for but was tagged in some random way that brought it up in my search. So many times it’s these breath taking pictures that are so stunning that I can’t help but feel like they were a little surprise left there…just for me. The following picture is an example of this (which is now the background on my phone)… Can’t remember what the search was for but my goodness…
6.) I love when I expect to wake up sleepy and I wake up alert. Then I go to my closet without knowing what I am going to wear (which causes stress for someone who gets up in exactly enough time to clock in on the very minute she has to be at work) and my mind puts together a bangin’ outfit without me touching a thing. It’s just a better, fresher, start to a day that could have been otherwise meek and dreary. It makes me happy.
7.) I love when I go for a drink of coffee (vanilla chai tea, peppermint tea, vanilla late, ect.) that I know is going to be cold and it still has just enough heat to make it the perfect swallow. It makes me happy.
8.) I love when I find something in a store and it’s more than I want to pay for it but I really want it. I decide to try it on and then it works perfectly. I walk up, ready to pay more and then WHAT?! It’s on sale?! Oh my gosh that’s so exciting. I know that this makes everyone happy but the silly thing about it for me is that it always makes me buy something else. I didn’t want to spend that much and then get a break on it and I think “Well I was going to spend that much anyway so I’ll just get something else”. It makes me happy it the most ridiculous of ways.
9.) I love when I think something is going to make me miserable. Something that I just know is going to make me cry and lose my breath and have the dull ache in my chest that I can’t shake no matter the laughter or the words of love and then it happens and… I’m fine. I don’t know how it happens when it happens and it’s just so beautiful. To expect pain and when it doesn’t come, that relief bringing actual pleasure… It makes me very happy.
10.) I love this most of all… I love when I wake up on a Saturday morning/early afternoon after a relaxing, calm, restful sleep. I walk into my perfect living room in my comfortable sweats and snuggle up in my favorite chair. We (my roommate and I or just me if she's not home) eat unhealthy and delicious food all day long. We watch movie after movie and eat snacks and drinks the stuff we don’t take the time to get in the week before work. We laugh and commentate and just…are. We don’t have anything we have to do. We don’t have anything that even requires us to get dressed or worry at all that whole day. So many people find this lazy and so on. They would feel guilty or totally uncomfortable with just…being. I find it beautiful. We talk, every weekend we have the opportunity to live this way, about how lucky we are. How lovely a leisure it is that we can lay in our apartment, safe from the wild and crime and hunger and severe weather and do exactly what we want to. This makes me happiest of all...
It’s such a pleasure and such a luxury that too many people don’t pay attention to. Not just take for granted but don’t make enough of an effort to really pay attention to. We all see these commercials or benefits or intense money raising campaigns after earthquakes and tsunamis and war… Every other day though, people just…forget. Take a moment: the next time you have 10 extra minutes to lay in bed when your body is warm and your pillow is the perfect cold - or you have 30 minutes for lunch rather than a normal hour and you are stressed about it because it’s “unfair” – the next time you run out of shampoo or hairspray or whatever we use every day that seems like a necessity and have to use the back up bottle that we “hate” – the next time you are absolutely furious that your ipod died and you don’t have a way to charge it – the next morning you wake up and (only) have to do laundry that day – the next day that you get to live like you do that allows you to taste what you swallow and see what is coming up behind you and know what is in the bowl you are eating, the next evening you are sitting judging the person’s style choice in the booth next to you (we all do it and bullshit if you say you don’t) while at dinner across from someone you love or even someone you love to hate, the next midnight you are lying awake in your bed…
Really make yourself understand that you could be:
(instead of having to get up in 10 minutes) Paralyzed and unable to feel anything or even gone all together instead of feeling the soft touch of your sheets even if you have to get out of them in just a moment.
Or
(intead of a 30 min lunch) Going hungry. Not just “oh poor thing you are hungry” but really starving. You have that open, burning, empty, aching pit in your stomach that water would hurt in abundance because it’s been so long since your stomach knew what it was like to have it’s walls stretched.
Or
(instead of running out of shampoo)Walking to the community shower, in your shoes because “No one is allowed in the shower without shoes”, where you are washing each limb of your body, every hair on your head, every private crevice of your being in front of 15 others who are doing the same thing. No pride allowed, just hurry to shower in the cold water amongst the others and try your best to keep to yourself.
Or
(instead of having your ipod) Having to listen to the sound of mothers giving birth in a tent guarded by machine guns because the people holding those guns have just been waiting to take the baby from you that you carried because the same guns raped you. Or listening to the sounds of torture or pain without medicine or cries of women who watched their husbands get beat to death or kids that don’t understand where their parents went and why the people with the guns are hitting them so hard… You have the songs of your recently dead ipod in your ears until it’s charged again.
Or
(instead of having only laundry to curse your day) Going to the river to beat your 2 pairs of pants and 3 shirts against a rock naked because you only have a small amount of time to “do your laundry” and you can’t leave your clothes dirty to wear them while washing even.
Or
(instead of living like you get to) Eating whatever can be found while guarding whatever “it” is with your life because you can’t see what is coming up behind you and there isn’t anything that keeps what could be behind you from taking everything that is yours.
My bed, my fridge, my full laundry hamper –that says nothing of the closet and dresser that are still over flowing, my couch that has a snag and my phone that drops calls and my ipod that dies and my job that “doesn’t pay me enough” and my friends that were too busy to have dinner one night and my vehicle that gets flat tires and has to be washed when it’s cold outside and my food that had a piece of foil in it and my sunglasses that get smudges too easily and my brand new nail polish that chips… What a beautiful life I lead. I’m so glad I have a bed and food and electronic devices that supply me with my “air” and friends who love me and a Mom who fills my fridge when she comes, no matter how old I get, and a job that supplies me with enough income to buy Christmas presents for the ones I love - even if it’s not in abundance, and allows me to eat dinner with these beautiful people I am lucky enough to call my friends – even if it’s just something quick and cheap. What a beautiful life I lead in comparison to the lives that are lead by people across the seas and right down town in every city we lucky people, who bitch about everything we are lucky enough to have – most certainly myself included, fall asleep in every night. What a beautiful fucking life I lead. A merry Christmas it will be in my bed, with my beautiful tree in my beautiful apartment surrounded by gifts and my Mom under my roof and my friends wishing me just that… Merry Christmas to the lucky ones. I’m glad I remembered today, in such a passionate fashion, that I am, in deed, one of the lucky ones. Merry Christmas in deed because of this beautiful life I lead.
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