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Unbridled JOY
I seem to have a tendency to avoid blogging when life takes one of its more turbulent turns, and so it has been of late. Whilst life continues in its unremarkable day to day way, somehow everything has turned on it’s head, until I feel like I’m walking on my hands, upside down through a sea of molasses.
Not entirely a lifetime ago, I was struck by yet another vicious bout of of wanderlust. When these moments strike, I feel like Vianne in Chocolat. I can hear the wind whispering its message, teasing and tantalising with stories of new places and new adventures and they all look brighter and shinier than where I am right now. I seem to have an affinity with places for a short amount of time, before I feel it passes and I’m on my way to newer, greener pastures. It’s as if my life, mine particularly, is more of a book of short stories or a series of vignettes than a story or a film. It feels less continuous and more like a series of moments that stand out, like connect the dots. I feel drawn to certain places, and certain people, and seem to spend my life following one instinct after another on a journey that’s a little wild and unpredictable, and by its nature seems to throw up beautiful unexpected moments when I least expect them, and when I fear they may have passed me by.
Which brings me to today. I had an uncomfortable start to the day, with a meeting I was dreading. Thankfully it turned out better than expected, and left me in a sardonically amused but quite upbeat frame of mind as I headed in to the second part of my day, which truth be told I was looking forward to almost as much as the first part of the day. Amidst the chaos of our shop in full swing, I slipped out into the back to take a breath, and regain the tattered remnants of my sanity, and as I came out of the corridor, my day suddenly brightened as I saw an acquaintance popping into the shop.
There are some people that you meet randomly, through the course of your life that you just connect with. Inexplicably. People that just upon seeing them make you smile. It’s like a moment of recognition: I GET you. Meeting them again, even momentarily is an event that fills you with joy, and this one was one I had been afraid would pass me by. I thought my wanderlusting might find me gone, without another of those moments of connection, but today the universe threw me a bone.
It really brought home to me something that I had forgotten, about myself and my life, in the turbulence of the last couple of years, and that’s the joy that’s derived from the unexpected moments, the spontaneous acts and the things you wouldn’t and couldn’t have dreamed in a million years. In the turbulence of life that I had tried to control, I’d forgotten the exhilaration of just rolling with it and somehow ending up EXACTLY where you needed to be at EXACTLY the right time. Somehow, without a modicum of control you still meet people who take your day from bog-standard to AMAZING in the blink of an eye, you get a kick in the arse just when you really need it, and at certain privileged points in your life you find yourself in a place where you can make a difference to someone just through being the right person in the right place at exactly the right moment.
Got to say, sometimes life really is just awesome.
