I hit a bit of low point yesterday, as I you may have noticed. Wailing about being forsaken at a lonely train station with no train arriving to take me to the next stop of my life and then wailing some more about not being able to be happy in the Now. Then some of you dropped by to offer some comfort and consolation. And a weird string of aha moments followed.
First, theacquiescentsoul reminded me that I had something going for me, and that something was self-care. He was right. Self-care is something that I have discovered a while back as being very healing. I had just forgotten about that.
The best thing about self-care, though, I only realized yesterday, is that you cannot do it in the past or the future. Think about it. There is no way to do it backwards or forwards. You can only do it in the Now. So what better way to keep myself anchored in the present moment when my mind wants to flee it and take refuge in an imagined perfect future, than self-care?
So I vowed to take a bath and watch a movie to give my mind some rest. I let in steaming hot water, added some bath salt, lit some candles and browsed through Netflix. My eyes quickly caught the title of a movie I had watched before: Self/Less. How fitting, I thought. At least I’m not alone, all Self-less. So I watched it.
It’s about a very rich but very ill man who knows he’s about to die very soon. So he decides to use a very new, not yet approved and totally illegal medical technology that basically consists of transplanting his consciousness into another human body.
The procedure is a bit disorienting. You have some weird flash-backs. Also, your body doesn’t function that well yet. You have to learn everything from scratch like a baby: How to walk, how to control your muscles, how to get your body to do what you want it to do. It takes a while.
So after he’s completed this stage, he’s being dropped off at his new intermediate home for adjustment, a nice two-story house (not a station, lucky bastard). He doesn’t know what he is supposed to be doing there and objects. But he is only being told:
Just relax and have some fun for a while. You’ve earned it.
Admittedly, this is not the most sophisticated line I’ve ever quoted from a movie. But yesterday evening it hit straight home with me for obvious reasons. You have to admit it’s pretty fitting.
I’m not gonna spoil the movie for you. Let’s just say he gets into a little trouble with the previous owner of his new body. I do think that I’m not saying too much, though, by saying this. There are two lessons in the movie:
- Get some rest after you’ve been through a lot, relax and have some fun.
- Never live someone else’s life.
I went to bed pondering that. And this morning I woke up and suddenly had an epiphany. You know which one?
Eff… the train!
I’m gonna quit waiting for that train that might never come anyhow, turn around and just plain simply leave this god-forsaken station right now.
I switched on my phone to take a few quick notes so that I wouldn’t forget and discovered a comment another blogger, Colleen, had left for me over night:
… I finally decided to let the train just go and ride along finding whatever I can each day, sometimes each moment *something* I can enjoy. And really, sometimes it’s just the can of whipped cream I keep turning over and pouring over my homemade hot chocolate…
It seems I’m not the only one to ever have been in this kind of rut. And not the first one to decide to just let the train go and have some fun. How is that for confirmation?!
And you know what else? I kind of bet that once I do that, this train station of mine will just evaporate as if it had never been there. Because maybe it really never was. Maybe it was just a product of my imagination all along. An optical illusion, a flash-back from my previous life, my previous preferred way of getting from one place to another.
Using mass transportation on pre-assigned tracks to pre-assigned stations.
And I’m starting to wonder: If this station of mine isn’t the place where I belong, maybe it still is the place where I was supposed to be, needed to be for a while, a rather long one, to realize precisely that… That I don’t belong there. That the station isn’t for me anymore. And that the train never was.
I’m choosing a different mode of transport now. My very own individualized one.
My feet.
They’ve been here with me all along. I just didn’t notice. I will ask them where they want to go, truly and excitedly want to go right now. And then just trust their guidance, set myself in motion and see where they take me. One step at a time.
So yes, Des, I think I found my ticket out of there. Turns out I had it in my pocket all along.
me
my one life. today 
First, thank you so much for mentioning me in your post and I am glad you were able to find a moment of peace.
Secondly, your attention to living in The Now is incredibly inspiring to me and it is a concept I forget far too often, but I’m glad you brought attention to it. It reminds me to spend more time in The Now, rather then the past and future.
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You’re very welcome. But the privilege is all mine. If you hadn’t dropped that line about self-care my evening would have unfolded quite differently, I’m sure. I’m so glad you nudged me in that more self-caring direction.
I very much hope that self-care will do for you what it did for me, too. That is to find some comfort in the most unlikely places. Sometimes those place are just so awful so that at some point we just cannot stand to stay there any longer. Maybe this is what this dreadful period is all about in the first place. It’s not about getting somewhere. But getting out of something.
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This morning I’m happy to read that theacquiescentsoul had the courage and intuition to offer some valuable insight. Sometimes a “nudge” is all we need to turn into an entirely different direction. Maybe today the train station just becomes a memory of that long stopover between destinations.
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That’s a really nice way to put it: a memory of a long stopover between destinations. I like that! And yes, a nudge is helpful. Often way more helpful than a big shove or a warning sign or whatever else might be intrusive.
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As cliche’ as it sounds, we’re right where we need to be at the moment. I resisted this statement thinking it’s so overused and new age-e. But for whatever reason, I’ve found it to be true. We’re on the same “train track.” i call it the life journey. And you’re not alone on the train or the journey, we’re with you too. I’ll share another favorite, “We’re all just walking each other home.” Knowing we have colleagues on the journey sure makes all these experiences just a little bit easier to work through.
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What a great quote: We‘re all just walking each other home. It reminds me of a block post I wrote on Kintsugi, this Japanese art of mending broken ceramics with gold dust. One reader commented: Maybe we just get broken by others so that we can piece ourselves back together differently, less perfect but more authentic. Or something like that. I also have to admit that there always is something to those overused lines, if we like it or not. As so many others before us had the same realisation. Strange, though, that we always seem to have to find out for ourselves. I guess, you can’t learn about life by reading a book about it. You have to live it.
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Sounds like great progress! Keep going now.
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Thank you for your encouragement, as always. This helps!
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My pleasure, so glad it helps!
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I’m glad you’re feeling better! And yes, I think the key is to realize that we are often exactly where we are supposed to be, and it’s okay to just relax and enjoy it. And when the time comes that we want to move on, we don’t need to wait for any “train.” As you said, we just use our own feet and start walking towards where we want to be, often in the company of others.
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Thank you, Ann, yes I’m feeling a bit better and hope it will last for a while. It certainly helps to change perspective. And the company of others is very comforting, too. Thanks for stopping by!
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