04. 02. 17 // The Difference Between Being and Being Numb

It’s weird seeing the world in being when you’re rushing by. It’s like getting caught on a rock in the middle of rapids, you never knew how fast you were actually going until you stopped to see the current. People flock the streets, the sun acting as a magnet, transcending barriers called walls that kept everyone in overnight. People walk, they sit in cafes, couples walk idly in the park hand in hand, people step to a quiet rhythm of the day with, what looks like, no purpose or reason. Having no goal, no place to be in their free time, they move to whatever area they choose. The day is embraced as easily as coffee is sipped in the morning. Free time? You ask. Is terrifying concept. It’s the manifestation of the fear that you may actually have to feel something. When you’re always planning ahead, searching for the next thing to do you never have to stop and feel what is happening around you. The clock runs ahead in my brain, tripping over its fumbling feet as it tries to keep up with my constructed reality. Emotions have no time in this equation.

I need, want, and must relax. I’m scared of living in this now because I’ll actually have to live it. I’ll have to feel. Emotions can be surpassed so easily, so much so that it’s easy to forget that when the sad slips away so does the good. The real. Dreams from the night see day but only on the screen playing in your brain as the clouds pass by viewing the real feature. Their movements sweeping the hands of time along while we are consumed with what is coming next up in our heads. By the time the answer today is tomorrow and tomorrow turned into yesterday because that set of clouds already passed.

It’s time to feel the life that I have been avoiding. It’s time to live. I don’t want to be scared of feeling hurt that all I am is numb, I don’t just want to see the hypothetical future that plays out in my head as the present one, the real one, is happening beyond that screen. That future I imagine, the one that leaves me feeling like I’ve avoided all possible pain, really just leaves me with the anxiety of the perpetual question, “but what if?”.

The good, happy, and exciting parts of life happen in the now, not in the future. No amount of worrying, or planning, is going to change what will happen right now. It causes unnecessary pain, the exhaustion paralleling a man trying to change the cinder hands of time on a grandfather clock. Life is terrifying because it forces you to feel, and when you avoid it all you feel is the anxiety in your brain. The good in the moment gets discarded and replaced with lists, plans, and fear of what is to come next. When you're being numb and avoiding - all you can see is the bad to come. But when you are simply being, the pain may still be there, but at least there is a chance for the happiness to come as well. 

Any moment, any idle stroll or afternoon spent in a cafe can be meaningful when you see that this moment has value, this moment can be the thing you needed to do that day. You need to feel to live, or else you’re simply just existing. Emotions tell us where to go so instead of avoiding them, listen to them. Today is today and tomorrow can wait because we have this moment now to embrace.