Manila—As we are no longer the angst-ridden girls in our 20s grumbling about how life drags on and that things may be different one day, my friends and I share conversations that look at how we have become different persons.
We still wail and whine at some point but more often we flatter each other in order to be happy, seeing that we’re better off compared to who we were decades ago. I have spirited discussions with one of my friends about our list of who in our interconnected circles are “living the life,” seeing that there are those of us who are luxuriating in comfort and are no longer on survival mode.
To most people, living the life means you have everything now that enables you to do what you have always wanted to do. You can be an adventurist who journeys to spaces and circumstances never imagined, or be a travel junkie who sees the corners of the world that you only previously saw in travel magazines or the bucket lists on where to go before you die.
There are those who gratified their zeal and hunger for finally having to follow their creative passions and are killing it.
They are no longer just surviving and enduring their hellholes of horrible work environments and dreadful relationships that they dreamed of leaving one day, and an unbearable life that they wish would change. They are past that phase.
All our life, there have been countless people telling us to be positive, see the good things, live our lives to the fullest and all that blah. But essentially, amid the whole noise about what to do and how to live, is the idea that life can be about what endows you with simple joys, pleasures and fulfillment.
This can be achieved, not with those grand travel and adventure plans but with quiet, regular and normal activities that you don’t even notice make you already realize that you’re living the life you wanted, and it can be amazing.
Likewise, if your work gives you something thrilling to look forward to in the morning, I would be happy for you. If you are able to spend time, eat, drink and talk with friends and devote quality time with your family, go on with it. If you want to run and walk the way you’ve never done before, do it.
We never know what will happen tomorrow or later, but if we want to spend life doing what we want— and this happens because something is no longer stopping us from doing so— then we must take advantage of it.
You don’t need to be on top the Eiffel Tower to feel alive. You can be on your farm surrounded by your plants, cooking yourself a healthy breakfast. Eat that ice cream you’ve been craving. Gobble up that pizza. Read that book. Sip your coffee. Watch the rain. You can simply lounge in your room, contented doing nothing.
Diana G. Mendoza is a journalist based in Manila. Send feedback to soltera2040@gmail.com
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