Life is Beautiful
Yesterday, I woke up and felt really positive. I woke up and I felt really optimistic about my day. It was the first time in a while that immediately when I woke up, I didn’t feel groggy or want more sleep or bummed that I had to begin the day. I woke up excited and rolled out of bed actually looking forward to my morning commute and going about the day.
Last Friday, I wrote about how I was going to do my best to hold myself accountable and live in the moment. For the last 7 days, I think I’ve done a really great job of that. I’m proud of myself. I’ve found myself genuinely enjoying moments as they happen, rather than in retrospect.
So today, that’s what I’m writing about. I’m writing about how I actually enacted what I set out to do a week ago. Primarily, I avoided depressing news and politics for the first time in over a year. I didn’t totally abstain from social media, but rather than scroll through feeds multiple times a day, I posted when I had something I wanted to say, then mostly avoided mindlessly spending time on it. This was a big step for me and it felt like it did wonders for my psyche.
Secondly–and maybe more importantly–I was far more conscious in my daily happenings. I’ve been listening a lot more closely to music and to the sounds of daily life. I’ve been feeling the warmth and taste of coffee on my taste buds. I paid more attention to the taste of a good beer. Another thing that I’ve noticed has been really fulfilling is being far more attentive to the conversations I’m engaged in.
It’s an extremely strange act to describe: attempting to be more “in the moment.” It’s probably so difficult because it took a long time for me to realize how out-of-the-moment I usually am. I think I know a lot of people who’ve excelled at this for the longest time, but I also think I know a lot of people who are watching life pass them by, too. To each his own, but I realize how unfulfilled I’ve been over the last several years. A big thing about myself is that I always talk about things I want to do, be it traveling, learning how to play piano, producing music, or hiking, but I never take the leap. For me, that’s what this comes down to: taking the leap.
Life is beautiful. Sure, it’s full of really, really bad stuff. But I also think we’re living in the age where social media is so ingratiated in our daily lives. Every negative thing that happens is magnified. We’re wired to care about the bad. Evolutionarily, it all makes sense. We aren’t programmed to care more about the good than bad because the good stuff is safe. We weigh the bad as more important because we have to protect ourselves. When we hear of someone beating terminal cancer, our hearts feel warm, but we go about our lives as if the majority of people won’t beat terminal cancer. It’s how we hedge expectations. When we have hope, we risk disappointment. When we have despair, we don’t risk more despair, but it leaves room for ecstasy if the situation ends up better than we expected.
Life is so much more beautiful than it is bad, though. I don’t believe for a second that we shouldn’t be conscious of the happenings of the world: terrorism, famine, the water crisis, or even the political election in our backyard. But one of my biggest vices is caring too much about these factors I can’t control. For people who directly know me, I’ve been laser-focused on this political election because we’re electing the most powerful person in the world. However, I’ve let that affect my everyday life. So for the last week, whenever something political happens and I see it, I shrug it off. I’m not letting it permeate my brain; my thoughts have been a lot more positive and a lot clearer.
The main reason I pursued a major in chemistry and a minor in biology while on a pre-medicine track was because I wanted all of the answers. Cystic fibrosis is usually discussed in basic biology classes, but at the heart, cystic fibrosis is a classical case of a biochemistry problem. I’m fascinated by biochemistry. Understanding the basic science behind CF is empowering. There’s nothing grandiose about CF. It’s a quirk of evolution that led to my parents being carriers and me being born with it. Every clinical presentation I have with CF is well-understood by both me, my physicians, and the scientists doing research.
Being a scientist has bred into me a sense of wonderment of my surroundings. This has been present for the last decade of my life — since the day I realized I wanted to be a physician. There have always been sporadic moments when I’ve been consciously in the moment and I’ve felt a deep connection to my surroundings. For the last week, this sense of wonderment has been present, but rather than just my fascination of humans’ abilities to build skyscrapers, cars, and art, it’s been in my fascination of human connection amongst all of the capabilities we’ve developed.
When I go read what I’ve written in the past, I notice one important trend: I always seem to be writing as if I’ve figured life out — even though I say I haven’t — and I’m writing to share what I’ve figured out. But nope, that’s not the case. I’m writing to and for myself. Writing is something I thoroughly enjoy. I enjoy it more than a lot of other hobbies. Throughout the day, I want to write and write and write, but can’t always figure out what I want to write. I’m writing to remind myself, in these moments of clarity, what I need to do to ensure that I’m the person I want to be. I’m putting my thoughts to the world because there’s a sense of vulnerability to that.
So, waking up and being ambitious and taking the day on headstrong is the first step. The second step is seeing the infinite beauty in the world. It’s not easy and it requires a lot of brainpower, but it’s the most fulfilling skill I’ve worked on in a long time.
We all have our stressors and reasons to be sad, but those are mostly unique to our lives. It’s amazing to me that a lot of the beauty in the world is universal, albeit subjective. We can all genuinely appreciate a breezy, blue-skied, sunny, beautiful day.
PS: I started STRANGER THINGS on Netflix and I’m 3 episodes in and it’s fantastic. Watch it. Watch it. Watch it. Seriously. Watch it. It’s good. Really good. I’m not kidding.
STRANGER THINGS. Watch it.
TL
