The pleasure of just existing

This semi-lockdown has made me realise that I have been relentlessly striving for years: pay off the house, travel, build a career, learn to mediate, lose weight, learn Spanish, renovate, create a budget, read the classics, cure social injustice, tidy the pantry ... you get the idea. I feel like I have been running a race trying to experience, achieve, and succeed since I hit puberty. Do not squander this precious life! Live your best life!

I’m a bit out of breath. And what is my ‘best life’ anyway?

Even though I don't do it well - or often - I instinctively recognise that a key element of living a good life is actually being able to slow down and appreciate ‘the moment’. In fact, over the last few years, I have found myself having these strange vicarious zen moments when I watch movies. If you're familiar with the animated Japanese Studio Ghibli movies, you may recognise the scenes that suddenly catch you with a gorgeous sky-scape, or a character sitting still in a field watching the wind move the grass, or someone lying on their back looking up at the clouds. I see those moments and crave them like water on a hot day. Then I realise that I'm watching TV to get those live-in-the-moment connect-to-nature thrills and I see the irony, reach for the wine and rearrange my butt on the sofa. 

But it feels a little bit like things are changing in this strange upside-down pandemic world. 

We have been fairly strictly ‘sheltering in place’ for just over two weeks now, and I feel like I am rediscovering the art of just existing. I understand that many people are suffering terrible tragedy, sickness and poverty, but for me, right here, right now, things are OK. In fact, they're actually kind of good. I am actually slowing down. I am more aware of my bed, my home, the rain on the roof, a cup of tea.

I actually feel a bit guilty about how good things are at this moment. This is not new. I have often felt guilt about my good fortune. I grew up in this first world country as part of the dominant culture, I had a good education, I was well fed and loved as a child, and I’ve had opportunities to travel. For all this I have felt guilt and a vague sense of shame, or at least a sense of unfulfilled potential. How could I have had so much opportunity and not become a CEO, found a cure for cancer or built an orphanage?

But at the moment, all those feelings are in abeyance. I am not feeling guilt, or regret, I am just feeling gratitude.

I have known for years that gratitude is a worthwhile practice to cultivate. But normally this takes effort and concentration. Normally I'm all like: 'I will start being grateful today. Maybe later today. Maybe tomorrow.'  But right now, feeling grateful is effortless. I have a roof over my head, a good internet connection and all of my friends and family are currently safe and well. These are mostly things that I take for granted. But not this week.

The pressure is also eased by the fact that this pandemic-afflicted world had pushed my expectations of myself way down. The world is changing every day which means that I literally can't plan more than a couple of days ahead. Getting to the supermarket is a big deal, so paying off the mortgage is not even a shell on the beach. My duty to society is largely fulfilled at the moment by simply being at home, so I don’t need to think about building that orphanage. For the moment at least it feels like I really do only have here and now.

I’m sure cabin fever will set in soon and I will start to think about ways to shave the cat, or of how I should be working on my career from home, but for the moment at least, I am enjoying the feeling of stepping off the treadmill, of suspending ambition and of just existing slowly and gratefully.

I hope you are all safe and well. 

Ky