New York Thoughts

“I’m just happy!”

I paused my music to talk to a tall stranger who inquisitively looked at me. He also had headphones on - in his own world.

“Oh, good! I could hear you singing and thought it was the airport music.” He responded.

“Yes, I love to sing.” I grabbed my overpriced airport matcha and turned to the stranger again.

“You look happy too, or at least I hope you are.”

He laughed.

“Safe travels!” I nodded to him, and smiled.

And that was it. I was off to my own gate and he was off to his. A kind interaction - one that I find myself in often as a Texan-born girl who loves talking to people I don’t know.

In reality, I am happy. For the first time in a while, perhaps. Happy with myself, happy with where I am, and who I am. It’s taken so long to get here. To feel happy - and I wouldn’t change it for a thing.

For a long time I placed conditions on my happiness, and perhaps that’s what hindered me so greatly.

I recently finished reading a book on grief by Joan Didion. Not sure why, as it’s been many years since I’ve lost someone I really loved - a blessing that I don’t think about enough.

Although I have felt grief of losing in different ways over the years. Loss of self, loss of words to say to make things right, loss of your home or a home that you thought was home, loss of direction, loss of money, loss of focus on things that truly matter - those things count too, I think. It can cut deep into you, that feeling of immeasurable loss.

If there’s anything loss teaches you it’s that we have everything we need now. In the present moment -

“Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.”

This is the recurring theme of Joan’s book, a book where she writes of the loss of her husband. A reminder that we all go one day, I suppose.

If life were to end, would you be happy where you are? Would you be your fullest self, singing in the airport for strangers?

I want to be my fullest self. Life changes fast, as Joan writes. And I’d like to appreciate the present moment as much as I possibly can. Hard to do. Very hard to do - but it must be done.

Life is, and always will be, the most complex and simple thing there ever could be.