Being Sappy

I'm going to beg your indulgence while I spend an entire post being, perhaps, profoundly naive. But to start, several months ago, I told a friend that I had not been happy for a very long time and didn't even know what did make me happy. I wasn't being dramatic--at that point, I really had no idea what did make me happy. And that feeling, I had come to see, went further back that my spectacular break-up. I don't know precisely why this was so. Perhaps someone was a negative influence and dampened my view of the world. Perhaps I was discontent because I had made, since 2006, every major life decision based on how I could get health insurance. I'd put money on the second possibility. Mostly. At any rate, I flipped that life approach the bird recently, and there have been dramatic changes.

To put it bluntly, life is magical. Again. I remember back in the day, when I was 19 or so, waking up every day and thinking silly little things like 'I think I'll fall in love today.' While thoughts like that are so silly as to be inane, I enjoyed them immensely, and couldn't help but love everything, even when things went wrong. I also remember collapsing to the ground in fits of laughter or choking on my drink because I was so amused at someone's comment, or looking out the window in the morning to decide whether any particular day was a barefoot day. How precious is the feeling of grass against your toes?

Things like that are happening again. I jumped around my sister's apartment for at least half an hour ecstatic at an internship I had found. Really, I was unnecessarily enthusiastic. I couldn't help but dance around my own apartment (while my roommate was gone) just because I liked the beat of the music. I chuckle to myself about tiny little things that cross my memory--things that never seemed amusing before. And I appreciate things more. I was coming out of the metro on the escalator back on a January day, and as I looked I could see nothing but gray, undefined clouds. It felt momentarily like I was rising into nothingness--a remarkably bleak feeling. And then I saw branches creeping into my peripheral vision, followed by the monuments, and finally by people passing through the National Mall. The second I saw those branches, despite the general gloominess of the day, I could do nothing but smile. How wondrous is that moment when you realize that something is not the way it seems, and that indeed something that can be seen as ominous is full of potential and can become a beautiful moment in an instant?

It's easy to let the concerns of the day blanch out our awareness of small but uplifting moments. My intent when I went to the Mall was to walk around simply because I was bored and disappointed with something that had happened. When I left I was still disappointed, and still bored, but not overwhelmingly so. Part of this is probably due to a conscious effort to focus on the positive things in my life and to be less cynical (Fear not, I adore cynicism and my sense of it won't go away. It just has a time and a place.). But part of my new appreciation for things has just happened. Why focus on the clouds when everything else is so active and engaging?

And so, to wrap up, I know now that I have managed to make some good decisions, and that the way recent events occurred was also for the best. Life is indeed magical, if we only try to see it. From here on out, I'm going to try to never let go of this sense that the world is full of possibility and is designed to be enjoyed in all its small wonders. Like the security guard at work says, life is rich and deeply blessed.