I am a city girl, head to toe. I could never go camping, I can even find swimming in certain seas gross, living in the countryside for a few days seems like torture to me and animals are definitely not my cup of tea. Also, I remember being a kid and desperately wanting to be a grown up. I imagined myself working in a nice office, wearing beautiful clothes and coming home at whatever time I felt like. This had nothing to do with me being rebellious, quite the opposite, I was a very obedient and well behaved child. The issue was I couldn’t get along with other kids my age and I preferred the company of my parents’ friends My biggest problem, however, was that I didn’t want someone else to decide for myself especially in two crucial aspects: having to take an afternoon nap and spending the summer holidays in the countryside with my grandparents. The nap was something unbearable and I don’t think I managed to fall asleep not even once. I would just sit there in my bed, with eyes wide open and bored to death, watching the clock and waiting for at least 1 hour and a half to pass until I would start messing up my hair, rubbing my eyes and compose the ‘I just woke up’ face in order to make my entrance in the living room. The holidays were just a three-month afternoon nap. Painful and unnecessary. Every morning was a challenge because I had to find a way to give the cats the milk my caring grandparents made me drink and which I hated. Then were the long, tedious days spent helping my grandpa in the garden or among pretty animals such as cows or sheep. The boys there had dirty fingernails and awful accents and the girls were watching soap operas all day long while painting their equally dirty nails in bright orange or pink. I would always end up counting the days until my returning to Bucharest and hating not only the milk or the smell of grass but most of all, my grandparents.
I was walking in the Kew Gardens today. The first day of summer in London, bright skies, hot sun and that feeling of ‘everything’s possible’ that comes with beautiful weather. After so many cold and rainy days spent dreaming of leaving the city and going to the seaside, the countryside or any side with a little more fresh air and less noise, I was finally there, surrounded by silence and feeling wonderful. It’s been a while now since nature has become one of the two things I find myself missing more and more. The other is taking an afternoon nap. Both of them always fall at the bottom of my ‘to do’ lists and when I get a chance of actually doing any of the two, it feels like a real luxury. This doesn’t only bring me to the conclusion that mommy knows best, but that we, people enjoy thinking of ourselves as complicated creatures when in fact the way we function is quite simple. No matter how dull it may sound or how much like a cliche, appreciation seems to be possible only when we miss something. And as much as I would like to embrace the ‘live in the moment’ thing, I often realize that my life is mainly composed of missing things or waiting for other things to happen. Maybe the moment is too short for us to be able to truly melt with it and feel like part of something greater. Personally, I find that this whole being present requires a lot of concentration and instead of finding answers, more questions arise. So today I’ve stopped asking myself whether I was ’seizing the day’, whether the joy I felt was pure or just a consequence of the memories of me running wild and carefree up and down the hills I used to hate. In the end it doesn’t really matter how pure or real it is if ‘just being’ leaves me with my heart full of joy.