There's something to be said about Easter. I don't mean the cute fuzzy chicadees or the cuddly bunnies surrounded by baskets of colorfully painted eggs, nor do I mean the holiday hubbub that the media and commercialized advertising talk about. I mean Easter, the day that Christ emerged from the tomb, totally alive and shining in all his divine glory. I think of it as a mini-new year. A new beginning. A fresh blank page on that book, that roadmap to the rest of your life.
I guess it's probably the sunshine that's been gracing NYC's pavements this past week, shining brightly and warmly through windows, begging us to venture outside and do something with our lives. Or at least, take a walk and breathe in all that is Spring. Dog-poop and garbage bags on the sidewalk aside.
But I'll let the sun drip its after-effects my brain, as long as I'm feeling as close to content and complete as possible for the moment. I've been worrying too much about deadlines. What an awful word, tinged with the sinking feeling of finality and certain doom. Just think about it. Go on...
Dead. Line.
Even better -- try out the plural form for size. Dead. Lines.
Try saying it again, just for good measure. Deadlines.
It's more than enough to make you want to shriek "ICK!" and shudder, perhaps even lock yourself in your room and cower in a corner so that painful pest called Panic and its best buddy Dread won't find you. What a wonderful way to murder one's good mood.
But you know what? That Deadline can just dig its own grave and crawl in it. Time's already wasted as it is.
So rather than get cranky and catankerous over the lack of time we have in our lives, maybe we should figure out how to better spend the time that we do have. No doubt, we should learn to become open-minded, open to new experiences, to novel ideas, to the unknown waiting to be unfurled. Should is the operative word. Here are a few pointers I've come up with to help you along, fellow seeker of inner peace:
Be patient -- even if that impacted tooth is taking advantage of its sweet time hiding in your gums and you have to continue wearing your braces for the next three years (or more) because of its stubbornness. Or you find yourself stuck for nearly an hour in the subway on a train that just won't budge, or wind up at the wrong stop because the conductor didn't have the decency to give you fair warning that the train will bypass your destination.
Take the time out to explore that which prods at your curiosity -- even if that means staying up all night to finish a really engrossing and magical novel that's at least 600 pages long, and your mother waking you up in her grouchy mode switched "on" because you neglected to turn off your bedroom light before your eyes drooped shut for the sweet surrender of sleep.
Try out something new -- even if that means potentially overcooking the pasta noodles you were planning to use with the new clam sauce recipe you wanted to try, only to find out that you're running low on the actual sauce... and clams. Just hope you can make a feast out of the food that you do have.
Do some Spring cleaning -- even if that means turning your bedroom (and perhaps your entire home) inside out as you donate your outdated and unwearable hand-me-downs, give yourself a paper cut as you rifle through the dusty stacks of papers that you've shoved into a forgotten corner of your desk/bookshelf. Or sweep and mop the floor, even if the dust and the overpowering scent of detergent trigger the worst of your allergies.
Watch a classic movie -- even if you might end up falling asleep through an old black-and-white film because you found it boring and kind of hokey. (Although, I have to say, watching TCM can get really addicting, but more on that in some other post...)
Read a challenging novel -- even if you wind up wanting to defenestrate that lengthy and wordy Tolstoy title because its so-called heroine was such a repressed and dreary character.
Go for a jog, go exercise -- even if you discover that you're wheezing after just a mere distance of 1/2 of a block when you thought that you were correctly pacing yourself.
Forgive my sarcasm. And I know that this phrase is spat out more times than the word cliche itself, but we should all think of life in this way: no pain, no gain. Take the good, the bad, and the ugly all in stride and just suck it up. Because maybe you'll learn something. Maybe you'll find something. Or maybe you won't. But at least by then you'll know. You'll know from experience what worked well and what didn't, so maybe you'll gain the insight to make things better.
That's really the only "hope" there is -- mending one small broken hope at a time so that everything else looks a little less hopeless. So that your world, and everyone else's world in general, can become a brighter place. A dim one, but nonetheless a slightly brighter place.
So as I said earlier, think of this time of year as a miniature new year celebration, your own little resurrection from the dimness of your daily complaints and catatonic complacency. Smile like you mean it, and maybe you'll infect someone.
Happy Easter season, everyone. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment