Just Write

There is something comforting in the uncomfortable. The lesser known happinesses, the hidden joy masked in a charade of anxiety. For what I wouldn’t give to experience the genuine simplicity once again of sitting alone on a park bench. The wind is howling, it’s cold, so the park population is sparse this time of year. The only thing protecting from the cold is the fur lined boots, the scarf, the warm cup of coffee you’ve waited all fall to be able to enjoy in the dead of winter again. The bouncing in your leg from the fear of being seen as odd, sitting alone. A small joy. A random peace.

School has just started. There is a period of time when everything is out of place, routines are lost, when every assignment seems to be due immediately. There is a constant surge of fear, of general stress over not just the impending tests, but the uncertain future you may face if you fail. Yet within the whirlwind of whispers of failure and late night tears, you realize, if only for a moment, if only for a brief second of pure lunacy, the power of acquisition of knowledge. You feel the yearning to know more, the basic human nature to want to learn, to discover, to create. And when that urge takes over, all else falls away, for what can be more elegant than the unadulterated consumption of knowledge. There is a blissfulness about it, a somewhat subconscious pleasure that delights in the fulfillment of a higher calling.

The heat in the dead of summer is suffocating. You step outside and are engulfed in the humidity, like stepping outside into a roaring oven. The community neighborhood pool, crowded, yet in the only sign of relief within the seemingly endless sunlight. You slide into the pool, the cool water immediately bringing hope. Before you take the dunk, you take one last breath. That breath is underrated. It’s forgotten, often, left behind. A last, quick reminder of how alive we really are, to be able to be brave enough to risk the underwater. Perhaps we should remember that breath more often.