I always hated looking at old photographs because even though there’s that small, moment where those memories make you feel all warm inside, so warm inside that you convince yourself that you can almost feel that experience of happiness again.
But inevitably there’s that crash back to reality, that realisation that you could look and look at that old photograph and long and long for it to be a part of your today and still, that moment of happiness wouldn’t be here right now, it wouldn’t be your present. It would still just be a moment of happiness that you had. One that you will never have again. Happiness is transient, made up of elements which existed at a time, those elements which made us feel all warm inside, which we labelled as…happiness. Those elements change constantly, there won’t ever be a moment again where all of those elements collide again to form a present happiness. One element which is constantly changing is us, I’m a different person now to who I was when that photograph was taken. My expectations of love may be different, my mental state might be different, my perception might be different so even if those elements were to collide in the way that they did in my past, It would not give me the same feeling of happiness because I am different, my perception of that experience would be different. It wouldn’t be the happiness that I was so desperately clutching at. It does us no good then to hold on to a past happiness, to grasp at a happiness we won’t ever experience again, at least not in a way that’s anything close to the fullness of reality. So, instead of looking at old photographs and attempting to grasp at past happiness, I’d rather put all my energy into experiencing the moment I’m in right now. The elements which exist right now, the ones that I don’t have to wish for or grasp at because they exist right now and the me that is experiencing them won’t ever exist in the same way again. I’d rather relish in that experience, the one I’m having presently, weather ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – just to sit with it, not label it but just sit with that reality, breathe it in and be with it. Ps. So, I lied a little, I love to look at old photographs but the point I wanted to make was that there’s no use in trying to grasp at the past, by all means reminisce on past experiences but just don’t grasp. In doing that you rob yourself of the fullness of the moment right now and become the very source of your own disappointment. Don’t grasp, Stay present. All my love Mayfair x
0 Comments
It's 3am, my soul seems a little louder now that the world is quieter and so I thought I’d welcome you into my 3am mind. My unapologetic, unfiltered, unadulterated 3am mind, the one that’s unaware of the skeptics and the social constructs, the 'think like this' and the 'act like that’s'
So, I was thinking, what really is the thing that shapes who we are and what we do? Is it our beliefs/our convictions/our faith? or is it our desires/our craving/ our longings ? Or maybe it’s a combination of them… I'm not really sure and at 3am I don’t think my mind could construct nor could my fingers type a meaningful and a conclusive answer. But, this question did make me wonder what the implications of each of these were, what does, what I base my actions on say about who I really am, what my truth really is? Say, who I was and what I did (I’ll use the two concepts synonymously for the sake of this piece) were shaped by something as seemingly unshakable as a belief. Doesn’t this imply naturally that there must be some consistency in the decisions I made yesterday and those I’ll make tomorrow? If I’m guided by my beliefs, which by their nature are consistent, then surely my actions too must reflect such a consistency. But, if this is the case then what happens when we make 'mistakes', when we do things that are out of character? (which we all inevitably do) Things like lying to those we love when we believe that honesty is the purest form of compassion, things like drinking too much when we believe that anything in excess is bad, things like cheating on a test when we believe that integrity is shown in the big acts and the small. Does this mean that in those moment we were acting based on something other than our beliefs and if then, what does this say about the weight of these beliefs in the first place? If I can so easily act in a way that does not reflect what I hold so dearly, does that thing worth holding so dearly in the first place? Did it ever mean anything to me or was it something I told myself I believed at a time that it was convenient to tell myself such? are there beliefs helpful to have or do they just subject us to a self-imposed feeling of failiure when we act against them ? Or Maybe I accept that my actions are nothing more than reflections of my desires at a given time?That they are simply reflections of the current me which doesn’t quite have it all figured but knows what she wants or at least what she thinks she wants and so acts upon this. A few months ago, I would have probably said that this is an unfulfilling way to live, I would have said that desires change far too often for us to base any sort of important decisions on, after all doesn’t what we want and what we need (long term) conflict far too often? Now though ?...I’m not so sure. Maybe it’s the happiest people in life who don’t agonise about what the ‘right’ thing to do is (after all who decides what 'right' is anyway), The ones who don’t stress about future regrets of decisions they haven’t even made yet, maybe it’s the ones who simply remember to ask themselves ‘what do I want in this moment ?' and honour that, that are the happiest. Maybe this approach is a little selfish but at 19, I’m not so sure it’s such a bad thing to be a little selfish, to make a few choices that carried no deeper meaning to them but were simply reflections of what i wanted in a particular moment... The 3am her. All my love Mayfair x |
Archives
October 2018
Categories |