• While some party all night long for their birthday, I am content with a two-hour walk
Image: PIXABAY
It was a big week in the Hatimy household this past weekend. My parents’ marriage turned 40 and their youngest child, aka yours truly, turned 36. By 9am on my birthday morning, I had one desire. To walk in solitude.
It seems silly but in that moment, my whole body had a desire to just go. To step out of my normal and walk into the embracing arms of solitude that I so deeply craved. You might find this questionable. Many might question my desire the same way I question the desire of a 40-year-old who parties all night long for their birthday and falls sick for two days after.
You'd think I'd wanted to go on this solitary walk to reflect on ‘deep thoughts’ as I turned a year wiser. Alas, all I did was walk. I shut down every inessential processing unit of my body and focused on the physical. It wasn't even a long walk, just a simple 8km in under two hours.
Unfortunately, as a mother of a two-year-old, I do not have the luxury to disappear for hours. I walked across the town, beside the fields and into the woods. I found myself at a swampy lake that draws a lot of nature enthusiasts into the woods. I took a right turn, circumventing the air field, before coming across a farmer with goats and horses by the road that would take me home.
It was an unnaturally warm late winter day. At this point, we might all join the global warming movement and call it an early spring day. The air was so crisp and still that it drew the hobbied pilots to take their gliders and Cessnas out for a spin. Yes, you read right. While most of us wandered about on our two by twos, others flew… for fun.
It was at this point that I let my thoughts run free. I am at a point in my life that I could appreciate the two parallels without getting influenced. Things like envy, greed and lust have never moved me, and the older I get, the more ludicrous they seem.
I can be happy for the pilots who take their planes for a spin in the sky, while I take a timed lap in my neighbourhood. Why? Because we are both on our destined paths in life. He might be on the sky and I might be on land, but we are both on our life trajectories. Everything I have learned to this point in life, makes me appreciate what I have and where I am even more.
It might be trivial for those much older than me to see me reflect deeply at my tender age, but I have lived long enough to know how lucky I am. There are others who never got a chance to get to this point in their lives.
This is why I never take anything for granted. I don't celebrate too much during the good times, nor wallow for long during the tough times. I might be young to some of you, but I have lived long enough to know that nothing lasts.
This is why as I get older, I am losing the taste in ‘chaos’ that is so attractive to young people. To be surrounded by others, to party and to compete with people who are on different life paths. The older I get, the more I desire peace and tranquility. Stillness. A simple victorious lap in nature suffices. Simply put, to lose oneself in the nothingness of everything.