How Being Off Work Made Me Realize What Truly Matters
At times I realize how blessed I am to have certain people in my life. The past year I was focused on getting my career onto a more or less stable path; eventually I dropped that idea because of an abundance of other opportunities and a deep, subconscious desire to come back to the creative roots of myself that I was long trying to bury down. I was thinking long-term, always scheduling, planning things ahead, yet I failed to remember to actually live the life and how they always say, feel the moment.
Being in the moment is an art. It took me a while to understand that. I’m learning this art right now.
The past month I was free from all the hustle, mundane 9–6 week and weak attempts to refresh my mind and body during weekends. I’ve been allowing myself to take my time every morning, to be a little lazy, to have a slow walk around the city all by myself, not to hurry anywhere and to feel zero guilt for not doing something “meaningful”.
This period of time made me rethink and reanalyze myself and develop a different perspective over things that matter to me. Living in a particular place or having a particular job does not make you genuinely happy unless there are people around ready to support you and love you the way you are — our family, friends, partners. This simple truth does not occur to us daily — I doubt that many of you wake up every day with the overwhelming feeling of gratitude. The more independent and self-reliant I was trying to be, the more I felt the urgent need to share moments and compassion with the closest ones.
The past weekend me and my friend were literally running through the train station to catch my train on time; whenever we’re together we either almost miss our planes or busses, or inevitably get into a jam. While we were hugging each other and I was comforting her with words of support for her new beginnings in another country, it came down on me how much I value our friendship and how much I will miss her while she’d be gone, even though I was pretty sure we would see each other again sooner or later.
I don’t intend to tell a cheesy story here but rather say how lucky I am to have sincere, caring, honest and loving friends that make my life so much better; these are the people I learn from, people that help me, although unknowingly, improve myself in a way and encourage me to be brave enough to pursue what I truly want. All of this is also a reminder to you that it’s all about people you surround yourself with. You may be naive enough to think that certain material things, possessions and achievements will make you feel happy and fulfilled — they will for a little while, but with time the joy of it fades away. Your people, contrarily, don’t — if you choose them wisely, they’ll be the ones staying by your side matter what.
The past several years taught me that sometimes people part unexpectedly, leaving you with a suffocating feeling of not having said and done enough for them when they were alive. I have experienced that, and it took long time of working on myself to free my spirit from the guilt that’s been devouring me from the inside. Life is beautiful as much as it is fleeting with its abrupt turns. Take some time to say to a significant person or, if you are as lucky as me, persons how much they mean to you.There is never a better time than right now.
