I was supposed to finish some work today for my side hustles after my morning practice at church, but I couldn’t because I got distracted. Initially, by the flights and hotel stays to Fukuoka, Japan, and how cheap it would be. I was happy to compute the expenses it would incur so that I could allot a budget for it in the future. After a while, my excitement turned into sadness (to the point of crying) when I realized that sometimes we want things that won’t happen as we imagined.
Suddenly, it’s not about travelling abroad anymore. It’s about life and how it has different plans that don’t align with ours. Man, it hurts. Especially if it’s something you dreamt of and hoped would happen, but circumstances won’t allow it. I knew how to process it inwardly and rationally, but it does affect me and keep me out of focus when I let myself sit with my emotions. The result: no work has been done today. My brain was just all over the place! I guess we’re all gonna cram it tomorrow after a full day.
As I was walking out of the workroom to unwind around the pool area, I was reminded of what my officemate told me once. The point of human suffering is that there are a lot of things that we want to have, and when we don’t get them, we become frustrated, disappointed, and angry with life. We expect to get a lot of things or to acquire a certain status, which makes us suffer from discontentment.
I thought to myself, maybe I was too greedy to even want what I wanted. But, I guess, to dream and to hope were not the problem—it was when we struggled to let go when our dreams and hopes were taking on a new shape and form. We can grieve. We are allowed to grieve when changes happen. We can stare blankly at our monitor for a few minutes, decide to discontinue working for the day, walk around to breathe and get some fresh air, write a song, or journal our processed thoughts. We can get a new perspective after we dry our tears.
We don’t have to stay in the suffering of discontentment. Let’s look at where we are and see how far we’ve come to get to this place we once dreamed of. It’s all by grace. Let’s not borrow future grief and live in the present. There are a lot of things to still unpack and learn. We might still struggle with letting go every now and then, but maybe eventually we can move on lightly and freely (as what I’ve read in James Clear’s newsletter).
I found a favorite spot to process my emotions. It was a cold night, but I saw a beautiful lily. I feel better now.
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