I woke up this morning feeling totally out of place; like I don’t have a purpose in this universe, forget the world , I was way beyond that. Did I just say Universe? Yeah I did. I felt I have no damn thing to do; when I know I have a countless roster of things in my list. I selectively eliminated that roster out of my head and kicked my logical thinking out of my apartment. I kept saying, “I suck at life”.
I reluctantly made myself a cup of coffee. My will power and positivity just got washed down the drain, like the water I used to rinse my cup. Well, I sat there on my new comfy couch, uncomfortable, trying to find out what is causing this cascade of downhill thoughts in me. I was so empty.
“If you were lost like me, how would you answer that question?”
Two years ago I moved to Melbourne to start things new. When people asked me, why did I move to Melbourne; what was that I was looking forward here, I never had a real answer; a genuine honest one. The truth is I still don’t know. My mind would soon Google for the obvious answers and I would say I came here to improve my profession, for better opportunities etc. Isn’t that obvious that I didn’t know it. If you were lost like me, how would you answer that question?
Inside those four walls of my apartment, I was looking for answers flipping through my past and nagging how good I was. I was an amateur artist in school and college; I was very good at sports. I was very creative. My mother used to proudly say that she never found me sitting idle. But now, the only thing that kept creeping up my mind is how rigid I have become, how my soul ached and how weak my body felt; how static I have turned out to be. I lost that equilibrium between work and life. I could hardly remember what it was to live.
I always came up with an idea to do something new, to do something I love and even draw out a blueprint. At the end of the day, the ideas got dumped into the trash and my thoughts into hell. Trust me when I say this, I am good in doing that. Before I took the last sip of coffee, I took a long pause. My thought just stepped out of me, like a second person. Wait a minute, isn’t that normal to feel so. Each and every one of us would be passing through this moment, this phase of thinking and yet it seems so novel and bizarre. What is that I lacked within me, what I lost. Honestly, I lacked nothing and I lost time. I was imperfectly perfect. Time is not just money, time is happiness.
“If painting made you happy, grab that canvas and brush. It is all about that first step.”
I am a full time Registered Nurse. Nursing turned out to be my passion. I felt it made me more human; more powerful; to possess that ability and power to look after people in their most vulnerable times. I have taken care of the rich and the poor, young and old, prisoners, drug addicts, the dying without indifference. I was doing that just right, to make their life better. All I needed was to embrace it. All I had to do was stop making plans and to just do it. That was the key ingredient to make my life better. To start doing things that makes me happy. If exercise makes you happy, just put on your runners and jog. If painting made you happy, grab that canvas and brush. It is all about that first step. To just do it and repeat it every time without stopping. If you are thinking you are not good at dancing take the first step and make a move. All you got to do is to put an end to that after-thought and do the damn thing.
If you ask me now, I still don’t know why I moved to Melbourne. But now I know why I am still here. I am here because I am happy and still intend to be. I took the first step of writing this article and it made me happy. I clearly know I am least of a writer but I decided to write this anyway. If you read this and relate to it, I wouldn’t know. You may think that my writing is naive and immature, I wouldn’t know. But at the end of this, the only thing that I would know and that matters is that I wrote it and I am smiling.
