“This is the most ordinary day; do you miss it too? When there’s no rushing or chasing, just a leisurely walk home. Spending time like this, without a worry, with the evening breeze grazing your cheeks.” (Perfect Day, Mao Buyi)

Recently, a friend told me about a man who had made her fall. I listened as she told me how the mere thought of him had become a little source of happiness in her ordinary days. He had unknowingly inspired her to become better. She wanted to be prettier, dress better, smarter, more interesting, so she began working on herself. She read more books, learned new things, and took better care of herself. Even on the days when life felt particularly tough, she could still find a reason to smile simply by remembering him.

I found myself thinking about what a remarkable thing love is. How someone can enter our lives and suddenly make the world feel worth participating in a little more. How the thought of a person can give us the courage to become someone we haven't quite managed to be.

And I wondered, when was the last time I thought of someone and felt the urge to manage myself better like that?

I couldn't remember. I don't think I have ever fallen for someone quite hard. Of course, there have been a few occasions when I encountered someone whose mind I found fascinating, whose soul seemed capable of providing me with consolation. People whose conversations made me want to stay a little longer, whose thoughts made me curious about the world beyond my own. But I have always been careful with these things. Before a feeling could grow into something, I would stop myself halfway.

I convinced myself that bright people deserved equally bright people. That someone with such a beautiful mind and an interesting life should be with someone just as extraordinary. So I learned to keep my expectations quiet and die. Because why would someone like that want someone as dull as me? Why would someone radiant want to spend his joyful life with someone bleak like me?

I have spent too many years protecting my heart from things that haven't even happened. And sometimes I wonder whether, in trying so hard not to be hurt, I have also been keeping myself from the small, beautiful experiences of being human.

Listening to my friend, I began to think that maybe not every feeling needs a destination. Not every affection needs to become a relationship, and not every story needs two people to know that it exists. If thinking of someone makes me want to read more, learn more, take better care of myself, or find a little more beauty in an ordinary day, why should I deny myself that happiness? Even one-sided love is fine, too, I guess. Perhaps silently admiring someone is fine, too.

***

This morning, on my way to work, I saw the sunlight through the windows of the bus. It fell softly over the streets, illuminating buildings and passing faces. The city was waking up; people were making their way to work, and the world was carrying on with its usual business. Nothing particularly extraordinary was happening. It was just another morning, another commute, another day waiting to unfold. Yet, for some reason, I felt a tenderness towards everything around me.

The world was still turning. The sun was still rising. Somewhere, people were falling in love, making promises, missing someone, beginning again. And I was here, making my way through another morning, with a life that, despite everything, was still full of possibilities.

I suddenly felt a little ashamed of how often I had called my life less than okay. Perhaps I had become too preoccupied with the things I lacked: the love I had never experienced, the people I had never been brave enough to approach, the versions of myself I thought I ought to have become by now. I had spent so much time looking at the lives I imagined I could have had that I had almost forgotten to look at the one I was actually living.

And what a life it is. There are still books I haven't read, places I haven't seen, conversations I haven't had, and so many mornings I haven't woken up to yet. There are little things that make me laugh and an entire world that continues to offer me reasons to be alive. I have made it through days I once thought I wouldn't know how to survive. I have come further than the younger version of myself could have imagined.

Perhaps happiness is not always the arrival of something we have been waiting for. Sometimes, it is the recognition that nothing is particularly wrong with this moment. That the absence of certain things does not make the things we already have any less beautiful.

Today, there is sunlight on the bus window. There is a whole day ahead of me. There is still so much to look forward to, even if I don't know exactly what I am looking forward to. And maybe that is enough. I think I am fine. For this moment, I can look at my life and see that it is still beautiful. That I am still here, still capable of feeling and thinking, still finding little reasons to smile. I am fine. Is that really so little for the whole of a woman's life?*

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*(Inspired by Fyodor Dostoevsky's quote "My God, a whole minute of bliss! Is that really so little for the whole of a man's life?" that I can deeply relate to.)

Image credit:  Vinícius Estevão