Ducks on a lake

“Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”

The juxtaposition of life: 

Wanting comfort but not wanting to experience discomfort.

The solution:

Don’t tell anyone anything.

If you never tell anyone anything, you never develop emotional connections, therefore you can never experience emotional pain.

But is this really the solution?

In my eyes, pain is the risk of by pursuing real emotion.

Living a life of pure stoicism seems like a waste of a life. Why not experience everything that life has to give you? God put you here and gave you emotions so you can feel them to their fullest potential. A stoic life is an unfulfilled life.

I have gone from being a stoic, melancholy person to a gratified pursuer of all life has to give.

This change came when I finally quit being sad that the times have changed, and being thankful that they happened.

Each person finds comfort in certain innate things. Things that remind them of comfortable times. Times where they had less worries, less responsibilities, and less stress. Typically these times are from childhood. It seems like you can go on a mental vacation by simply revisiting a certain place to transport back to a certain memory.

For me, this place was the small grocery store a few blocks away from my childhood home. This grocery store represented a place that I could find comfort no matter where I was in my life. It was just something that was always there. No matter what happened to me, when I walked in there it felt like home. It reminded me of short walks over with my family on a warm summer night to get ice cream for root beer floats while sitting around a campfire. It reminded me of riding a bike to pick up snacks for a sleepover. It reminded me of being a newly licensed driver picking up drinks on the way to a friend's house. Each time I visited, the same conversations were had with the employees who never seemed to get older.

These moments, none that important, made up a place in my memory. 

A place of comfort.

This constant grocery store was removed soon after I left home.

This place of comfort that just existed in my mind, had been removed.

I still remember my first time stepping foot in the Family Dollar that now occupies that piece of my childhood. I was so filled with negative emotions that I left in a rage. I felt chills and anger rushing through my body at the same time. There was nothing that happened in that store, but it was not the same. It felt like something had been taken from me. It felt like a piece of my heart had been removed. It was something so simple but yet so impactful.

That grocery store was my ducks on the lake in Central Park.

It is something that was just always there. But now it only exists in a past story.

Crazy how such simple things occupy such a large piece of your heart.

Now I look back at that moment and recognize the greatness of the memories that those moments in the grocery store created.

A motif was created in my own life and it’s truly beautiful.

I don’t regret the feelings that it brought me.

I had to experience the pain, but I got to experience all the joy too.

The same goes for people. The more you tell them, the more you are able to form an emotional connection. This connection makes you feel fulfilled and happy. But when it ends, you feel heartbroken and empty. 

But isn’t that worth it to feel pure happiness?

I would run the risk 10/10 times.

I will experience the pain of loss if it meant I was able to feel the happiness I felt.

It is true, sometimes you miss it and the feelings make you cry. But at least you are able to miss it. 

You can’t miss something that didn’t happen.

Although the moments are gone, the feelings remain.

***

Thank you for reading!

My goal is to inspire self-improvement in others through my personal stories and experiences.

This is The Exploration.