In pursuit of better, you’ll constantly find yourself reaching for the next best thing. Life always seems to be happening in the future instead of right now where you find yourself. Sometimes, it is not even about being greedy or being ambitious, it may just be not knowing how to stop either out of fear or pressure of missing out, or not being enough, or trying hard to avoid the blame of not doing everything possible to obtain a “good life” or to preserve the good one you were privileged enough to secure.
The ironic thing is that we subconsciously try to do this with our relationships, the constant comparison with others who seem to have it better than we do, who do not have to face the same challenges that we have to. The idea that some other people seem to have it easier and faster than we do. The perfect picture we always want to paint when we want to be able to sit in on our orchestrated pity party.
I never watched Naruto much, but the one thing I would always be grateful I came in contact with by that exposure is the phrase “the closer you get to something, the harder it is to see it”. I have spent years mulling over what that meant. I mean the depth of veracity in that statement, I took it literally by standing really close to a television, which in the end, I missed the object and the objective.
Does that mean we need to keep a bit of distance to really appreciate certain things? Is that even possible with relationships? The one you share with a partner who sees you in EVERY moment of your being. At least the ones that matter. I remember telling a friend that it is like trying to decompress, and trying to get your shit together, but the person you are trying to decompress from and for is literally watching you unravel and is waiting for you to come back to real time and participate in this real thing that is the fight you are having.
On the other hand, the little banters, the big beef, the predictability, the comfort of being able to let your guard down and to assemble it again to face the world, is the price you pay for intimacy. The intimacy you get depends on how much of that price you are willing to pay. There is never a time when that price is not high. Maybe it could be worth the gain, the freedom you end up losing.
You know that feeling that you get that says you are surrounded by love, that you are not alone anymore, which is also what you often complain about, that feeling is from being willing to say this is all I need. I could be chasing a million different things, but I like my mini corner, my slice of this Eden. It is okay that not all the patches are lush, that some spaces feel dry and parched, that there are still some empty spaces between the greens.
Coming to this space is also a new type of living. A choice to stay even when you could have better, because good is also just good enough and because better still means there is best. An acceptance of where you are, even if the picture hasn’t come together yet.
This post is not about complacency nor about kill the need to fight for more. Rather, a nudge to look around and see all the beautiful things you’ve managed to string together, to appreciate the parts of your life that you already love instead of chasing after parts that are yet to fit into the grand picture. In the end, the choice is ours what we make out of the life we create or fall into.
Yours truly,
Dcconnoisseur.
Connoisseur of Memories 