It is Sunday and I am writing at Starbucks again. I am drinking a cup of Tim Horton’s earl grey with the perfect ratio of cream to sugar to milk. I am listening to Joni Mitchell. Marcelo is quietly writing across from me. I am happy.
It is currently 1PM and my day is just getting started. It has been a slow day, but given how this week has been, I find myself thankful for the change in pace. I had an amazing conversation with Marcelo’s mum this morning. It was the kind of advice I think I needed to hear this morning, this week, at this point in my life. I don’t think it was intentional, she dispensed it so casually, while doing laundry and playing with Coco, as if she was pouring me a cup of coffee over the breakfast table.
Ever since I graduated, I find myself directionless, more often than not. I have a fancy title, a stable source of income, and a job that does good in the world. And yet I feel as lost as ever. I don’t know who I am. It creates an inner turmoil that prevents me from feeling settled in the present moment. It is possibly the root of my anxiety, the fear of how my precarious identity or lack thereof could possibly hold up to the looming uncertainty of the future.
In the past few summers, I would spent weeks solo travelling in the hopes of finding the answer. When I travel, I feel liberated, exuberant. It momentarily convinces me that everything is inconsequential, that I am a whole complete person, able to derive a sense of fulfillment from each present moment. I remember writing in my travel journal: “Today could last forever and tomorrow could come whenever” — time loses significance when you are just happy all the time. It is a state that persists intensely until the day I go home, and the illusion fades and I am back to working my 9 to 5, convinced that the truest version of me lies continents away still travelling from city to city, living off a fantasy world in which no one has work, or responsibilities and where your real life problems are on pause back home a thousand miles away.
I am not travelling this summer. I am not riding camels in the Sahara or eating spaghetti in Roman trattorias. This year, I am sitting at a Starbucks in downtown Oakville on a perfectly plain Sunday, it is cloudy out, and I am getting back into writing regularly again for the first time in 2 years. This is completely unexciting. This is good for me I think.
I got to know Marcelo’s mum a little bit more this morning. We talked about our careers, how lonely our jobs can be at times, we talked about immigrating to Canada, and I noticed similar themes echoed in my parent’s own stories. We talked about how long life is, how there is still so much that a person has yet to experience at 27 years old, how there are still many harder challenges that await you in the road ahead.
So what do you do then? How do we move forward when life only has the potential of being exponentially more uncertain. She told me this. You cannot control these outcomes, you cannot control other people, but at the root of everything you do, you can make always sure you are taking care of yourself. And this lies beyond just treating yourself to a nice dinner, or going out to the spa. It means taking care of yourself, in the ways that are mundane and take time and steady effort. It means being organized with your life, it means exercising, it means learning how to communicate effectively, it means reading and learning about the world, about yourself. And with time, this sense of self-identity will naturally follow. It is not glamorous and frankly it is entirely unexciting, but it is the kind of progress that reveals itself over time, until it amounts to something greater, until one day, it no longer requires effort, as it has become a part of who you are.
Once you know who you are, she says, the positive impact will radiate in every aspect of your life. You will go with the flow, unbothered by the things that don’t matter, you will be able to make hard life decisions, because they are in line with who you know yourself to be. Once you reach this point of realization, this sense of identity will be unwavering and provide a sense of grounding clarity that extends beyond the indefinite future. And it takes along with it some of the fear and uncertainty that is unavoidable in this life, but survivable always.
This is what I learned today, and I’m sure it is it easier to write out on paper than it is to actually live out and follow in daily practise. But it is a direction at least, it is a start. And for that I am grateful, along with the many other things that are filling my cup on this not-so-sunny-but-still-beautiful Sunday here in this little Starbucks in Oakville. I am happy.
Hope you are all having a good Sunday.
Lots of love,
Cindy
PS. The sun just came out, I am not making this up. It has momentarily peeked from behind a cloud and it is now a sunny-and-beautiful Sunday here in Oakville. I am still as happy as before.