Slow down, you crazy child
There’s a song by Billy Joel that one of my brothers shared with me many years ago. It’s called Vienna. It goes;
Slow down you crazy child
You’re so ambitious for a juvenile
But then if you’re so smart tell me,
Why are you still so afraid?
Where’s the fire, what’s the hurry about?
You better cool it off before you burn it out
You got so much to do and only
So many hours in a day
But you know that when the truth is told
That you can get what you want
Or you can just get old
You’re gonna kick off before you even get halfway through
When will you realize… Vienna waits for you?
Well, I’m not sure if Vienna was a metaphor. Neither am I a juvenile now, but this song still resonates with me. As I write these lines, I’m also surrounded by Zen Pencil and Buddha Doodle books that scream;
Dream the impossible dream
Think radically
Be grounded
and so on.
All these trailblazing words got me thinking; in the desperation to be different, to stand out, are we losing ourselves? Like Billy Joel says, are we gonna kick-off before we even get halfway through?
What’s wrong with being normal?
I’m going out on a limb when I say this; everywhere I look around, there are tech-savvy coaching centers that want to turn kids into coding geniuses or parents who want to raise children “differently”, or we (the ones who start their mid-life crises a decade earlier) who are trying so hard to label ourselves into specific traits; I’m an introvert, I’m a nerd, I’m a straight dealer, I’m emotionally stunted and on and on.
All of us change, and we’ll continue to change for the rest of our lives but when we start labeling ourselves, we try so hard to live those labels even though we may have outgrown them a long time ago.
What we don’t seem to realize is part of being different is to allow ourselves the space to explore who we are and how we are evolving. Most importantly, it means letting go.
There’s a sense of relief, a wave of effortlessness in letting go.
I failed several times in life
And chances are, I will fail some more.
A year ago, I had written a post exploring what it feels like to be compassionate.
I was obsessed with the idea of compassion. I read books. I had the same conversations over and over again with different people about how they perceive compassion, where they draw the line between being compassionate and letting go of their self-respect. I have all answers in theory, but I failed to implement them in reality. I was so consumed by the idea of being compassionate that I didn’t really follow the basic principle of compassion; understanding. That was the first time I realized, I need to let go of this obsession, and simply observe, experience, and act.
More recently, I was having these once-in-a-blue-moon conversations with my girlfriends. Like it or not, we grew up conditioned to believe that we need to get married in our early 20s, have a stable job, a home, and two babies by the time we’re 30.
We’re past 30 and we’ve probably checked-off just one-third of that list. Part of the crises that we’re facing (that I mentioned earlier), is because we’re unable to let go of those expectations we had from ourselves years ago. What we aren’t seeing enough and telling ourselves enough though is that what we got instead is hardships that made us more human, more aware, more grounded, and happier.
Does that mean everyone else who checked off their list before 30 is living in a bubble? Not really. At the risk of sounding philosophical, we all have our own journey. And each of us is evolving in our own way. All we can hope for is that we are listening to our conscience every step of the way.
I was once told; at a very fundamental level, if your intentions (for yourself and for others) are good, if you are not harming another person, there’s nothing more you need to ask for.
The simplest things in life are hard
I’m told that letting go, being compassionate (and many other such traits), are very fundamental to our nature. Why then have we come so far away from ourselves that our mind seems like an external force outside our body that is controlling our thoughts, actions, and words?
Until we really know answers to any of these wandering thoughts and questions, let us keep reminding ourselves that wherever we are, whatever we are feeling, experiencing, and undergoing today, at this very moment, is okay. It is exactly as it is meant to be.
I strongly believe that as humans, each and every one of us is connected to each other through an unseen force, an energy (or however you’d like to call it). And as long as we’re in this together, we’re going to come out of it stronger and radiant like the sunflower.
Slow down you crazy child
Take the phone off the hook and disappear for a while
It’s alright, you can afford to lose a day or two (oooh)
When will you realize… Vienna waits for you?
