the spectacular now
Lately I have been at a loss for words. Which, for those of you who know me, might come as a surprise. It’s not that all of a sudden my mind has checked out, turned blank of every little thought it once had. In fact I have a million thoughts, jumping around my brain as though it were a trampoline at a children's birthday party, yet I am unable to convey what I have been feeling. I can’t form sentences, can’t write down words, though my thoughts are plenty and robust. I have chalked it up to my life being quite dull at the moment. That in just a few months it will be exciting and new, and then and only then will I have things to say. I feel like I am waiting, constantly waiting for my life to actually begin. And that I might say is not the way to live. I have had a week off from work, thinking I would have time to write, as much as one could on days spent doing, well, nothing. But I can’t. I put the tip of my bright pink fuzzy pen down to my notebook, the one without lines on the pages, and seem to have nothing to say. But last night, that changed for me. I took the 36 bus line, to then transfer over to the T, my new commute. I was sitting there, watching the sun go down, through the blurry, scratched up bus window. There were only a few people on the bus with me. To my left, sat a small woman in a red shirt covered nicely under a jean jacket. She had sunglasses on, small black frames, barely covering her piercing blue eyes. She would look down at her phone, at the same text over and over, roll her eyes, cross her legs, then look away in the distance. At first I thought the sunglasses were unnecessary, being that the only light coming in was from the fluorescent glow at every bus stop. But then I realized there were small tears that she kept wiping away in hopes that nosy people like myself wouldn’t see. I wondered what was making her so sad. I thought that maybe it was someone she loved, someone she put those new white sneakers on for. That someone made her upset, made her tears fall quicker than she expected, made her body scrunch up like a bug, sitting there waiting to get off the bus. Maybe they cancelled plans, or maybe a fight had erose, and she was going to try and heal any form of heartbreak that had happened. To the right of me, was a man, he had brown wavy hair, the kind I could picture swimming through on a hot day in July. His legs, that were hidden by white washed jeans sat sturdy in front of him. He was reading a book, a book that had a light blue cover. Every few minutes, as the pages of that small blue book turned, from his equally delicate hands, a smile would appear on his face. He would do that cute thing, where the smile was small, barely any teeth visible, he would shake his head in approval, bite his cherry colored lips, then all of a sudden that emotion would disappear. It was as if it never even happened, but it did, he knew it, and I saw it. Within seconds of turning the page, the smile would be gone, his face stern, back to reading the words on the pages, that held his attention. And finally in front of me, sat an older man. His hair was grey, like the shoes on my feet, and he had clear oval glasses sitting right on the front of his nose. He sat there, with no distractions. No book, no phone, just staring through the window behind me. He didn’t smile much, but a few times his somber face would break, and a smile would appear. He seemed to simply be sitting there taking in his surroundings, nothing more and nothing less. He would stare out the window, then look over at the girl in the red shirt, probably seeing her tears like I did. Him and I made eye contact only a few times, but I could see his eyes rapidly moving at the pace of the bus, more intrigued by the view than of me. Something about that made me envious. He didn’t need any distractions, no music or meaningless conversation, he simply sat there, ~taking it all in~, one might say. I sat there a book in my right hand, but too distracted to read. I kept checking my phone for a text from that one person that would not appear. Instead of just being there, as bland as a bus ride may seem, my mind, my head, my thoughts were elsewhere. I have been realizing that lately, I only long for things, I want and want, and sit here always thinking about what will happen, rather than seeing the life that’s right in front of me. It’s passing me by as my heart aches for things that haven't even happened yet. Sometimes I think of a boy, a boy whose life is no longer a part of mine. And I stress. I stress so much at what will happen. Will we end up together, I question? Will he meet a new girl and fall in love, and slowly forget my existence? I see his life in pictures, I think of our time spent together, happily drunk nights and summer days, and I get an aching feeling in my chest. To me, he is important, to me, no one could replace that stupid smile, but to him, am I the same? Am I just a person he talks to when nights are cold and lonely, or am I irreplaceable in his mind as well? I let these thoughts fester, I let them eat away at me, and exhaust my happiness. I let them keep me up, or distract me from days that should be spent with the people in front of me. I can’t change the situation, or what happens when a beautiful girl catches his eye, but instead I can fix this boring over played plot. Instead of my heart hurting, longing for someone who may or may not love me, a situation I have no control over, these future plans that may not even happen, I need to just stop. Stop worrying, stop fixating, and enjoy myself. Who knows where I will be in 10 years, or where he will be, but right now I am here, he is there, and I can’t let my mind bother over something I can’t do anything about. I do believe that love is the most important thing we can have, touch, feel, but I also believe that if you don’t live in the moment, if you let these thoughts and worries overcome you, you aren’t really living, are you? I don’t need to focus on the future all the time, or on what could happen, instead I should be focusing on what is happening, right here, right now.
The bus came to a stop, and we all got off, the girl in the red shirt, the boy with the blue book, and the man with the oval glasses. We all went our separate ways, to find the places our hearts desired. But I walked a little slower than I usually would. Instead of basically running, ignoring the people and the noises around me, I tried to take it all in. I saw a man with eyes you could see miles away, holding a bouquet of fresh roses. I wondered who he was giving them too. I saw a guy and a girl, she was wearing a long floral skirt, and her hair was tied up in a bun. She was dancing around him as he stood there laughing at her. Not long before he joined in on the fun. Then there was a man on the phone, and I heard him say I love you too, before putting the phone away when his cheeks turned a pale red. There was so much happening around me, my eyes were looking from one thing to the next, and I realized what I had been missing. I have been missing out on life. I say I have been at a loss for words, because my life is ~dull~, but that’s bullshit. So much happens around us, and we just don’t see it anymore. We are too obsessed with past problems, with the frightening yet exciting future, to just see what is right in front of us. For me, I like to write, I lacked words, inspiration, stories, yet there they are staring me right in the face. I could write about the girl in the red shirt, about her mishap with a lover, or the guy with the blue book, maybe he was a writer too, about to write the next big novel. Or about the older man in the oval glasses. I made up a story for him as well. For other people, it’s not writing, their passions are far off and different, but it’s all the same. We should be living not waiting. Waiting for what’s next, focusing on things we can’t change, but instead, stand there and take it all in. I want to live in the now, I want to see and feel everything around me, not sit folded up in a chair, staring at a phone, waiting for a text, scrolling through pictures of people I don’t even know. I want to live the life that I have ,because if I don’t, if I focus on everything else but the ~spectacular now~ (don’t watch this movie if you hate happiness), then it will pass by without me even noticing. And one day I will be older, staring at a man I don’t love, wishing I slowed down a bit, and learned to love the life that I once had.
