Some friends call me Phoenix. I die and get reborn. Turn to ash and resurrect as new. Do I really? Or do I lose a little bit of myself every time? Or maybe I do and still grow new parts to my soul – stronger, wiser, more open and more pure?
Every time during the moment of desperation, when pain and death in my thoughts and feelings get bearable, when I have the short opaque glimpses of moments of calm, I only find strength to cry “Help!” and ask a short question: “Why did I need this test? What should I go through, what should I understand?!” Tell me, teach me. Give me the answer, why. Why should there be so much pain, disbalance, and fear?
And every time, lovingly, the world gives me an answer. And every time the answers are different. But in the end, they always make sense and that ultimate sense is the same.
I suddenly understood why Hamingway called his book The Moveable Feast – the name that I would never understand. In the Russian translation, it sounds “Holiday that’s always with you”. I always thought that I needed to understand it, and was refusing to. I thought I didn’t want to. Because if I truly got the meaning of it, I would never be able to be sorry about myself.
What does it mean to be sorry about myself? Definitely not the pleasure of suffering that I would consider a reality. To me being sorry about myself is more about “being a slave to the fate that rules my life instead of me”.
I don’t want to be a slave. And I definitely don’t want to be sorry about myself. I don’t want any kind of random fate that knows nothing about me to have control over my life.
It’s like the flowers – it’s not enough to just plant them. You need to water them and know when and how much. You need to pick the right soil for them. Add the right nutrients. Sprinkle. Prune. Protect from sun or cold. Leave alone so they could get rest. And only then you can expect it to bloom and stay healthy.
Who will water, feed, and sprinkle me? Who will protect me from heat or winter? Who will take care of my rest? There is only one answer.
I am my own beautiful and unique flower. Nobody in the world knows how to take care of us.
Why did I need to be sorry about myself? I know how self sorrow may be destructive. And I know how Love and pity are polar opposites. But If we resort to self pity over and over again, it must serve us in some way. The question is – how does it serve you?
Why do I hate the idea of parting with my self pity if I finally get what it means – the moveable feast, the holiday that’s always with you. What – is that holiday? That feast. The feast that won’t leave you ever? What is it, what did he really mean? What’s always with me – till my death?
And the answer came. The only thing that is not me but that will stay with me till I die is… life!
Life is a moveable feast. Life is the Holiday that’s always with you. Only if you let it… be the holiday.
How many times ai spoke about celebration of life without really truly knowing its deepest meaning.
Celebrating life is not about an endless party with endless self indulgence. Celebrating life is about celebrating the moment – just the way it is. In every expression. And if you think deeper about feeling sorry about yourself and being in pain – it’s nothing more than the strongest desire to feel the beauty of life. The strongest desire FOR life. To take this life fully and completely. Just the way it is.
When I was 10, I came across my mom’s dictionary of philosophical terms. And one carved itself into my memory forever. Life – is an objective reality given us in sensations. I like how the definition of life specifies that reality needs to be objective. It’s a reality that is based on actual sensations that are not imaginable.
One can argue that everything is subjective, and there is living in imaginary worlds, but for the sake of today’s essay, I would just argue that it is more an escape from that reality that’s called life. Giving us sensations – that’s what life really is. The sensational feeling of living that we experience with our beings. The sort of emerged and careful observation.
Accepting my life, accepting myself in this life, nourishing myself into this moveable feast, the holiday that’s always with me…