Jimmy Chen (www.jimmychenchen.com)recently wrote this article on the Thought Catalog which kind of blew my mind. First bit of writing I have read in a long time which made me stop in my tracks and feel that beautiful ache.
i wrote this in 2008... i had more wisdom 3 years ago than i do today. good. enjoy x
Long distance love affairs aren’t what they used to be. Today’s technology has really paved the way for us lovers who are separated by the seas. Hand written love letters have been replaced with text messaging, facebook and my personal favourite, skype. This doesn’t mean it makes it any easier though. If anything, it makes it all the more frustrating. To know exactly what your beloved is doing, through regular status updates, late night texts and instant messaging, definately makes the miles in between fade away. But in no way does it bring them any closer to you. It’s like being told exactly what you are receiving this year for Christmas, but without being allowed to actually unwrap and enjoy it. You have their love, but you don’t have them next to you. Instead, you rely on a computer screen and temperamental internet connection to keep the thread weaving between you.
The future of the future.
We place so much importance on future prospects. We plan and organise, we re-plan and re-organise, we move on to plan two and then three and then we assess our back-up plans. When does forward thinking morph into wishful thinking? Is our faith so brittle that it threatens to crumble at the first obstacle? To depend on forward planning, in the context of relationships, is to set up boundaries and barriers to what otherwise could have been. We need to remember our young and naïve friend, spontaneity. To be spontaneous in our decision making is to really hone in on our gut feelings. Our instincts need to be on the forefront of the choices we make. If it feels good, then go with it. If something isn’t feeling right, then it probably isn’t.
Life is best lived in moments.
Too much forward thinking can get you into trouble. Too much structure can leave you feeling boxed in without much room for error. What we forget is that we are meant to make mistakes. Just because we don’t poo our pants and eat crayons anymore doesn’t mean we aren’t subject to poor judgment. We are so acutely aware of making mistakes that we don’t put ourselves in situations that warrant on the spot decisions. Alternatively, we use forward planning to foresee any possible crossroads in the future, and we already make our minds up before the coin has even been flipped.
Inside us is a universe.
We are all individuals. Our personalities, our past and present experience, our hopes and our dreams, all converge to make up who we are on this day. What you feel now may not be what you feel in one week, one month, or one year’s time. Nothing is set in stone, nothing is guaranteed. Considering this, nothing should be taken for granted. It is more realistic to believe that anything is possible, rather than crunching the numbers and arriving at a perceived outcome. It’s humbling to think that everything around you is in flux: an ever changing, ever morphing universal continuum.
You got to have Faith.
There is a difference between forward planning and faith. Faith is intangible. It is the unison of truth and hope. It is quiet contentment and gratitude for what has yet to unfold. It doesn’t predict the future, but it connects you to the future in a less structured way. It fills the quiet night and calms the rising tide within your mind. It is the flicker of something stirring inside you, something that doesn’t let you sleep at night, something that craves your unrelenting attention. You use you faith like a drug, and let it run thick through your veins.
In a world that screams out deadlines and action plans, I am grateful to step up and say this: I choose to own each and every thing I feel. I choose to listen to that voice within. I choose to be here, and nowhere else but here, in this moment. And because of this, he is no longer all the way over there.
He sits listlessly inside my chest, and watches me as I undress
