A Search For The Beautiful
I showed up to a manicure appointment earlier this week drenched in sweat and desperate for water. It seems that walking anywhere in Bali for more than five minutes results in the kind of clammy flush that makes you look unwell. The nail technician, concerned, walked out with cool towels, water, and a little piece of paper with a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote on it. Precious, I thought. But, it was more than precious, it was ironic timing.
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
This week I got what I’m going to refer to as ‘the feeling’. My first taste of this feeling happened about a month into my six-week sabbatical from work — nearly 10 months ago. The feeling? It’s one of complete contentment. Different from the bursting feeling of happiness, it’s a quiet stillness that overshadows any worry, or any doubt. It makes me feel light and joyful. It makes me feel undoubtedly connected to myself and what I’m doing. As someone who has a difficult time finding contentment, it is quite possibly the most pleasant emotion I’ve been touched by.
After settling into this newfound feeling on my sabbatical, I felt determined to bring it home with me. To keep the light airy feeling as I re-entered my real life. And I did for maybe a month, and then as most pleasant emotions do, it slipped between my fingers faster than I could cup my hands in a way that would allow me to hold onto it. My days were once again filled with things that didn’t feel like conscious choices, but more as burdens that kept my life afloat. The setup of my sabbatical allowed me a quick taste of the beautiful, but it wasn’t yet mine to take home with me. In order to figure it out, I needed to deconstruct how I landed where I did.
Most of my 20s were spent on a path I never thought to question. It was a decade filled with college parties, finding a husband, bridal showers, bachelorette parties, a house, a dog, and a corporate job. Each milestone felt like posing for a forced Instagram photo boasting an impressive view with cropped out imperfections. Despite my discontent, I trusted it. It was so beaten down by people who seemed to have it all, I hardly noticed the offshoots. The less-obvious paths. Instead, I kept walking, hoping I at least looked good while doing it.
I obsessed over making my life look like the lives of those I admired — of those who took good pictures in front of good views. I wanted to be a witty mom with cute kids whose friends thought I was a ‘cool mom’. I wanted a job that would make others think I was powerful. I wanted to have a house on Lake Washington others would envy. I wanted so many ideas of things, I stayed on course, forgetting to ask myself if any of the stops on the path excited my soul. I’m not saying the people living waterfront on Lake Washington aren’t happy — I’m sure many of them are — but I’m certain the ones who are happy are happy because they thoughtfully selected paths that filled their soul up. They didn’t chase the house, the house was a result of chasing things that mattered to them.
To build the idea of the life I thought I wanted, I chose my degree and optimized my life around money. I positioned marriage as an arbitrary finish-line that needed to be crossed — I even put pressure on its happening. My days were filled with things I thought I was supposed to do. Things the world told me I should do. Not things I loved.
Shortly before my 25th birthday, I was swallowed whole by a deafening cloud of anxiety. It infected my entire being, leaving me as a shell of who I was before. I felt unable to think. Unable to be happy. Unable to leave the path I had so intently walked down. This led to a distancing of my body and mind — a case of depersonalization that made it feel like I was no longer attached to the body that somehow kept moving. I forced myself to continue working, to socialize harder, to drink more, to be on a plane as often as I possibly could. Anything to distract me from the discomfort of not being whole.
I lived this way for close to 4 years. The alarms in my body were sounding, but I was too afraid to listen, because I knew that if I did, it would destroy everything I had worked so hard to build. To find contentment would surely lead me down a path that wasn’t my marriage. That wasn’t my job. That wasn’t my life. In absolute fear of what others would think, I put bumpers up in my lane. Letting myself fall into the gutter and past the pins I thought I was supposed to hit felt like too much for my ego to bear. I wanted a nice house, not to soul search.
I now call this the default mode. It looks different for every person, but it’s the mode where we detach ourselves from our true desires. It’s the one where we keep mindlessly walking. It’s the mode where we give too many shits about what those around us would think if we did anything different. If we’re lucky, our bodies will revolt. They’ll let us know when what we’re doing isn’t right. When I finally started to listen, I realized how much time was spent in this place. How my life had become an accumulation of choices and beliefs that were hardly my own. This awareness emerged slowly, but with a permanence that required action.
To figure out where I was going, I felt a burning need to go alone. Dragging someone else up and down different offshoots searching for the right path wasn’t fair. You can’t walk happily together if one is certain of their path and the other needs to wander. As it turns out, a relationship will never bring ‘the feeling’ if you can’t find it on your own. That old adage feels far too simple for the depth of truth it holds.
The impetus of me leaving my husband, my home, and my job wasn’t to find ‘the feeling’, it was to find and start doing what I truly wanted to be doing. But, in being so wrapped up in what I wanted to be doing, that glorious, wonderful feeling came back. While I know this feeling will always be a fleeting one, its presence in these opportune moments feels like enough to let me know I’m on the right path. This new one feels scary. It doesn’t feel safe or certain. Yet, I feel the most at peace I’ve ever felt. I can’t yet boast that I’ve found ‘the beautiful’, but I’m definitely a step closer than I was before.
