What’s life but a series of mundane, totally normal, ordinary days?
I think I’ve been facing a bit of a crisis.
Lately, I’ve realized more and more that I haven’t given each day the credit that it deserves. I just try to get by each day as it comes and endlessly squeeze whatever I can from it, treating it like a simple utility for me to maximize in value rather than a precious gem. Sometimes I see days as weeds, obstacles I have to plow through again and again as the weeks roll over me like a never-ending tide just to reach a goal or dream that I’ve fixated myself on achieving, regardless of the cost. I see days as a means to an end, nothing more.
Today, as I was staring out into another ordinary but perfectly beautiful sunset, I was fundamentally shaken by the beauty and grandeur that takes place in the sky every single day outside my apartment. The striking, magnificent display of God’s creative work, overlaid pastels in a dazzling swirl of hues, both soft and striking all at once. The streaks of pink and orange light piercing the sky, surrounded comfortingly by a smattering of mellow violet and periwinkle blue undertones. How could I go about my day to day, not taking in the moments of beauty in this world, so caught up in the hamster wheel cycle of rushing from deadline to deadline, midterm to midterm?
As I sit typing this at 3:40am on October 24th, 2020, burdens of all sorts weigh heavily on my heart. Schoolwork, a looming job interview, the weight of my future all collectively feel like a continual anchor on my shoulders. A lingering sense of guilt rests upon my every waking thought, whispering that I should be studying, I should be doing something productive, I can rest later. But too often, the “later” never comes. Briefly, I’m reminded of a song I used to listen to by Twenty One Pilots. A memorable lyric: “I guess I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” Is this really what life is? What I’ve let it become?
I find it peculiar that, in the midst of my constant internal conflict, my body often betrays my mind by exposing the effects of the ongoing tumultuous nature of my thoughts. My shoulders naturally gravitate towards a tense, hunched position. My jaw remains clenched, my throat taut (and people ask me why I sigh heavily so often). My natural inclination leans towards being stretched so thin to the point where each breath seems shallow and unsatisfying. So much of my life has been spent existing in a state of high pressure, often self-inflicted, that now it has become my equilibrium. My mind is about as much at rest as a high-pressure cooker.
Through these scattered musings, it dawned on me how desperately I needed a shift in mindset. A shift where I wouldn’t look at each day as just a stepping stone to get to where I want to be and nothing more, but rather where I’d treat each day like the valuable and priceless entity that it is. A gift, pure and simple. A fleeting mist, birthed and buried before one can even register its wonder.
In college I have too often gotten so caught up in the process of getting somewhere. Even when I go on walks, it is with purposeful intention and a clear destination in mind. But what if I were to never reach the destination? Then all I’d be left with is the process it took to get there. As cliché as it sounds, the whole “it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey” adage rings so true more than ever for me. Just focusing on getting to the finish line blinds me to what comes after, yet another race or another ordeal to wrestle with. I don’t spend time soaking in the euphoria of the runner’s high, the feelings of adrenaline mixed with the burning yet somehow enjoyable lactic acid pumping through my veins. Nor do I spend time drinking in the scenic fields I sprint past, never realizing the rich beauty to be found within them. My mind becomes singularly focused on the goal, the finish line, that it becomes all I know. We are all just hamsters chasing the next best thing to get to the next best thing, without realizing we’ve just been in a wheel the entire time (pardon my tasteless metaphors).
Even though I’ve written draft after draft, unsatisfied with the pieces I’ve created because they haven’t quite met the golden standards I hold for myself, I’m trying to learn to let go of the “I’ll get this, and then I’ll be happy. I’ll just finish this, and then I’ll have all the time in the world to pursue whatever I like. I’ll be free to finish it next month.” Life is never like that. It doesn’t play by your rules. Next month, as tangible as it seems, may never come. Creation, though unfinished or imperfect, is beautiful because of how flawed and blemished it is. Even a day in all of its boring, monotonous, extraordinarily ordinariness, is strikingly beautiful if you just take a moment to look at it, really look at it on its own and not as a means for you to obtain the next best gem.
Every day has a sunset, but there has never been a sunset exactly the same as the one you saw today, and there will never be the same exact one again. Every day is the same but so vastly different in an infinite amount of ways. The thought amazes me.
