for once again, it is july
I can't believe how fast time has flown, how we are already halfway through the year. Is this what being in your 20's is like? The years flying by, like sand disappearing between your fingers - the more you desperately clutch at it, the more it flows away from your grasp?
I wasn't feeling my best today. Sometimes I can't decipher the difference between my actual mood and the side effects of my antidepressants. Is my medication causing me to feel down, or is it just me? I finished my tasks today by force.
After work, I ensued a long conversation with my mentor about my future plans, as my internship contract was coming to an end. We delved into a fruitful discussion about academia and what it means to be a safety professional. It's difficult to recite the conversation verbatim, but the part that struck with me the most - and that I would like to share with you - is his way of approaching challenges. "I do not focus on the difficulties in any challenge. . .I search for opportunities within those challenges instead." He tends to reinforce me with a lot of valuable wisdom, but something about this bit stayed with me for hours afterwards. Maybe it's because challenges intimidated me at times, but what if I looked at them as opportunities, as ways to grow?
At the end of our discussion, he complimented my work ethic and that made me feel good for a while. It is funny how words can make you or break you, how a small word can lift you up or tear you apart. I guess one thing I have learned is that happiness is a visiting guest. It is not always grandiose or big. It can be small and may comes out of the blue. Small but certain happiness. I was feeling down today, but a small encouragement like that made me feel better.
Anyway, I have been continuing Haruki Murakami's Wind-up Bird Chronicles. If there is one writer I would love to emulate, it would be him. The way he evokes emotions; merging psychological realism, the complexity of being human, and the mundanity of everyday life. Unlike anything, I also enjoy his depiction of loneliness.
Since I started reading, I picked the habit of marking my favorite lines with sticky tabs. Here is an excerpt I bookmarked from today's reading session:
“The point is, not to resist the flow. You go up when you're supposed to go up and down when you're supposed to go down. When you're supposed to go up, find the highest tower and climb to the top. When you're supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down to the bottom. When there's no flow, stay still. If you resist the flow, everything dries up. If everything dries up, the world is darkness.”
I really liked those lines. I think it means that life will take you wherever you are meant to be, and resistance is futile. You will reach new heights in your life, sometimes you will feel stagnant and lost, and other times you may hit rock bottom. This is the flow, the flow of life.
For once again, it is July, said poet Czesław Miłosz. I can't wait for what's to come.