Mesmerising Moments and Musings

I have two favourite moments in the day: 

One is at around 6-7am in the morning when the air is fresh and crisp

 and the streets are still deserted.

The other, especially around this time of year, is sunset.

Not sunset in that romantic, blazing-red-sun-disappearing-over-the-horizon sort of way that such a statement may bring to mind.
My room is facing the wrong way for me to see that side of it, and the only glimpse of said blazing sun that I do get, is in the reflection of the hotel windows opposite my building. 

No - what I am referring to is that time around 7pm, when the busy-ness of the day is behind you but there is still a good chunk of evening left ahead of you. It's when big puffy clouds take over the dimming sky, above endless red tiled roofs and orange brick church towers; some amazingly fresco-esque, others threateningly charcoal grey. The bats are out flying in a frenzy and there is a cool breeze that filters through the narrow streets and high buildings of the old Jewish ghetto. There is the static excitement of a potential thunderstorm - but then, it could all just roll into another quiet balmy evening. It's a conflicting moment of relief and regret; time to relax but also the end of yet another day, one in which I probably could have been more productive.

Just yesterday at exactly this sliver of the day, it hit me that another chapter [or sub-chapter let's say] of my life is reaching it's closing sentence. The little black dot marking the end of the last phrase is a mere metre away and once it's done, it'll really be done.

Granted, I will probably come back, and there is not need to be quite so dramatic, but never will it be under the same circumstances, and nor will I be the same person by then. My days of watching bats fly at dusk from my Jewish ghetto room as a twenty-something student will be behind me for good.

And yet "As soon as I get through exams"// "As soon as I get this essay in" //"As soon as I do this and that" // "As soon as, as soon as..." seems to have been on repeat all year long. Only to be followed by: "Then I'll catch up with that friend of mine"// "Then I'll read that book I've been meaning to read"// "Then I'll prioritise staying fit and exercising"

It seems that

As soon as I [insert pending boring task], then I will [insert desirable task]

Has defined the past few months that I've spent here. Far too often, far too much.

For a condition with such a simple remedy, it seems it can also be a chronic one.

Putting off what we really want to do and things that we enjoy for the sake of doing what we feel we ought to do, happens too often and too easily. And the scary thing is that for so many, by the time they realise that they might be in the right place, whether physically or mentally, or setting to finally do what they want to do, half their lifetime is behind them. Which is rubbish!

I mean You Only Live Once, right?

Why do we we let our happiness fall so low on our list of priorities?

Of course we need grit and determination and hard work.
It is important to be productive and, from time to time, do things that just have to get done.
But it's also important to remember, that once you finish a chapter of your life,
or a paragraph of it, or even a simple sentence of it,
once that little black fullstop is in place, it ain't budging. Full stop.

So we need to keep on asking ourselves if what we're doing is really worth our time and effort.
If it is going to get us where we want to be and eventually make us happy.

Cos if the answer to that is 'no'...

It's time to stop filling the page for the sake of it, and flip to a fresh a one.

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