I feel like a million bucks like I just took off my socks (or bra, I’ve heard that’s even more comfortable, I wouldn’t know) after the end of a really, really long day and I can finally just kick up my feet and relax. Not too long ago the earth just completed its ceremonial cycle around the sun, and in regular earthling fashion, a new year began. I was not feeling like a million bucks at that point however oh no, far from it. I was in fact, for all intents and purposes that cartoon character with a perpetual rain cloud following them around wherever they go, even if the rest of the world is enjoying rainbows and sunshine.
The dark cloud was all the stress, pressure, desire to be better, laziness (and guilt for said laziness), regret for a half-assed year and of course (because how could they possibly be missing?) the cumulative weight of my bad decisions for the entirety of the previous year. With this annoyingly persistent storm cloud of negativity, I found myself unable to move very literally. My body, weighed down by tons of regret for a wasted year on one side and a mountain of expectation for the New Year on the other simply went on strike. Food tasted like tar and music sounded like the sound of an elephant’s indigestion.
I wallowed on my couch, leafing through web novels on my phone to distract myself from the fact that my body had completely refused to get up and do ‘actual work’ (a mountain’s worth of which I had stacked up). I realized, during my languishing that I was a significantly bigger control freak than I ever gave myself credit for. My body, like a computer overloaded with too much data and instructions, and I contemplate, calculate and plan for too many crashes. And then came the sun.
During my forays on the internet in search of distraction, I came across a book that fundamentally shifted my perception of how life worked ‘The Surrender Experiment.’ The story of the author, and how letting go of his own preconceived notions on life and surrendering to the flow of things brought him a life wildly beyond anything he ever could have conceived himself floored me. If him, an economics graduate student at the beginning of his discovery of this new way of life, could let go then what the hell did I have to hold on to?
The way of life described in the surrender experiment added a layer of a shock to me when I noticed a surprising parallel close to home. Let me introduce to you one of my favorite human beings on this planet, for the purposes of this article we shall call her the chicken princess. The Chicken princess is a Sagittarius (I can see you astrology skeptics cringe, calm your tatas, this is relevant.) She is beautiful friendly and devastatingly intelligent, so why do we call her the chicken princess? Because more often than not the process she follows for decision-making has an eerie resemblance to that of a chicken. (This is not snark, she had a pet chicken at some point, and they really looked like mother and feathered daughter)
My beloved chicken princess lives her life in a way that can only be regarded as going with the flow. You can imagine how badly it grated on my nerves when she flippantly treated what I saw as great priorities in her life. I harangued her for it (honestly, I still do, its habitual at this point) and her, lovely human that she is, tried to live her life more like me. Of course, it never worked, she would always go back to chicken mode but the effort she put in showed just how much she respected my opinion and I love her to death for it.
It is hitting me now that in her life, disorganized though it has always seemed to me, things always fall into place when they are supposed to. People bring themselves when they are supposed to, and money brings itself when it is supposed to and all the while she continues her airy, gooselike Sagittarius (I told you it would be relevant) way of living.
Through her and through the lens of my newfound realization, I am finding that instead of fretting about my thoughts on life I need to just relax and live life itself. I need to accept my circumstances and what life brings me to the greatest extent, only through that can I be free and happy and only in that way can the sunshine through the storm clouds and unto me.
Manenoz 