"Keep going, going on ... I can't go on. I will go on."
- Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable
Lisa,
You would be so glad to know that I have been practicing Pilates on my own almost every day of this week. The motto posted on the wall at BE center (which I starred at to focus during our sessions) kept me going:
another 10 sessions, you will see the difference;
10 sessions more, you'll have a new body."
Now that I've completed about 10 sessions, my changes are apparent to others but unfortunately, imperceptible to me.
Perhaps I have become numb over the years. "What makes me happy" and "what is happiness" are questions that constantly looping in my head. I desperately searched for this so-called happiness so I made myself a list:
- morning coffee, fixed in the way I like.
- purchase something pink.
- soft things. towels, blanket, pillows, etc.
- reading a great book while sun-bathing.
- the smell of grass.
- the smell after rain.
- make a good, hearty meal for myself.
- a walk in the park.
- buy a coffee mug.
See, it takes so little for me to be quite satisfied, and I do enjoy life as I live it. A few years back, I came to realize that it was necessary for me to be alone for a while in search of a kind of self-identity. Independence, you may call it. So that I could determine my happiness without letting those who orbited around me do. Oh but they had done so, in such brutal ways. They had my happiness at their fingertips, lifted and dropped as they wished. It was my own fault, really. I let them. I allowed them. No more of that. My life is in my own hands now and I'm motivated to make it worthwhile. Things have finally come around and I can actually see a future. A future that is colorful and stable, like a beautifully arched rainbow sitting in a distance which I believe I can reach.
But all these happened before my ten sessions of Pilates. I have not changed since then. I learned how to make myself happy and perhaps I was and am happy. Though, there is still this one missing piece in me. Its absence pronounces its presence like a black hole. Slowly, it eats bits of me alive: my patience, my confidence, my optimistic and idealistic believes. Every now and then, I would forget its hidden presence. But when it wants to remind me that it is still there, within my body and my mind, it shatters all the shields I have built for myself.
Life is not about living for one self. At least not to me. I admire those who are satisfied to be alone. As a blind believer of many things, I will go on believing that one day in the near future, I would find that happiness which I seek. And I would be so satisfied that I could even die smiling. Meanwhile, there is always Pilates and our weekly session that keep me going, even though these might not be able to make me anew as promised on that wall, and as I have secretly hoped for.
