Sunday scribbles #21: Color your life by living as if it were your first day.

This post is a rather personal and probably therapeutic one, but lately I have been struggling to coloring my life. This may sound strange, because I am making several colorful paintings a week, but that is not what I mean by coloring my life. I 1mean that on multiple occasions where I experience joy, it is not shown to the outside world. This is something my fiancée has noticed several times. She then starts to begin to ask me questions as: "are you actually having fun or do you want to be somewhere else?". To her, and others, I can come around as numb, which isn't too handy since I am in fact enjoying many things in life and I don't want to negatively influence others emotions. After all, emotions are contagious, which it why we prefer to be around happy people rather than negative naysayers and complainers. A nice example to describe what I am feeling is a concert we attended last month. For a long time I have been a fan of the artist Machine Gun Kelly. With being a fan I mean listening to his music a lot and enjoying it loads, not following every footstep on his socials or hanging posters on my wall. I do have a hoodie from one of his albums, but that's only cause I wanted a cool hoodie. Sidenote: it displays the words 'Lace up' on the front which to me means you are preparing for battle, or less heroic, anything you want to achieve. Okay, back to the story of my emotionless characteristic. After watching his documentary on Netflix I learned about his Mainstream Sellout tour, which was happening in only a month from then. I quickly went online and got two tickets so I could go there with Laura. Since relationships are a big part of my life, especially this one, I will start using her name for convenience. The day arrived and in the one hour car ride to the concert we were of course already vibing to his music. We, and mainly me, were pretty hyped for the concert. Upon arriving the pre-show act had already started: Iann Dior. Man, he brought out fire! After a short pause in between the two shows, the man himself finally arrived to the stage: Machine Gun Kelly!

In the past I have often been the one who was jumping around the place and dancing a lot, sober. Yes, I didn't drink alcohol till I was like twenty or so, and even still, I don't often drink. I just actually love dancing. Once, at a holiday with my family in Greece, I went out to a Greek club with my cousin where the bouncer came up to me and told me the following words: 'don't dance so hard'. Yeah buddy, then go ask the DJ to start and play shitty music. Funny thing was: my cousin was, and probably still is, physically more buffed than the bouncer back there. So we weren't bothered too hard. Now at the concert of MGK I was jumping around way less than I expected too. I enjoyed it, tons, but to Laura I looked like someone who wasn't too happy to be there, except for some rare moments where I couldn't retain myself. Those moments were there, but way too few in my eyes. It is difficult to explain, but it happens more often that at the moment itself, I look close to numb, and afterwards I feel a huge sense of joy of having attended the event. So it is strange that when the moments are there, I am experiencing everything in my own physical and mental bubble, appealing slightly bored to the outside world, but days later am sharing how much I actually enjoyed it and how much fun I had. This may look like I am lying but I did in fact enjoy myself a lot.

Is there something wrong with this approach? Well, that's up to you, but in my case I would much prefer to actually show how much I am enjoying myself at those moments themselves. I've been reading into this but I have yet to find an answer to why this happens. Maybe the answer is that I am, contrary to what I believe, too busy with what other people might think of me. Yeah, just act like the cool tall dude John, don't show your inner kid to the outside world. Pretty messed up if you know I am often telling people I would like a Peter Pan tattoo cause I don't want to ever grow old. There is something I have read that I will now try to do in dealing with this: experience the world as if it's your first day. People always say we should act as if it was our last day, and whilst I do believe the strength of these words, we should also try it the other way around: act as if it's your first day. The beauty of children is the way they explore the world. I believe this is the best thing about children when you see them grow up and it should teach us something. How fun would it be, if we could channel that energy and enjoy the wonders of the world as if they are completely new to us. Those wonders can be as small as rejoicing the taste of your favorite food, or as big as visiting the pyramids in Egypt. When thinking about these sayings, of living as it's your first or last day, the main thing, once again, is living in the moment. In that regard it may probably be time for me to finally read Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now. I have been delaying this one till the time felt right, but when struggling with this 'numb approach' to life which happens more often than I want to or would care to admit, I think the time is there. So sure expect a follow up in the future, because as we speak, the book has just been bought.

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday friends, and as they say at Tomorrowland: don't forget to live today ;-)