When was the last time you felt completely carefree?
Not the subtle stream of contentment when you’re having a decent time at the bar or flash of satisfaction when you checked Sakai and found out you did better than expected on your final exam, but complete and utter, mind-blowing happiness?
The kind of powerful joy that sends a rush of energy through your whole body, when your ceaselessly chattering mind goes silent, your heart swells, and you feel as if nothing else exists in the world but this very moment?
If you answer honestly, the number of times this insane rush of perfection has overtaken you is dismally low.
After reading a recent Business Insider story, the question that nagged me was “why?”
The story is about a French non-profit that told 20 cancer patients they would give them makeovers. The twist? The patients were told to close their eyes and were then given hilarious and ridiculous looks. When each patient would open their eyes expecting to see a beautiful look and instead find themselves looking at a ridiculous version of themselves, a photographer captured their moment of surprise through a one-way mirror.
The video is heart warming to watch and you might even find yourself making the surprised expressions with them. The project was inspired by a patient’s statement that before cancer, she used to be much more carefree.
Sad, but not surprising. Battling a debilitating and life threatening disease that has the potential to slowly strip away the life you once knew and loved is bound to also rob you of your sense of carefreeness.
It makes sense for cancer patients; it doesn’t make sense for us.
To fully tackle the various societal and cultural phenomena that have been slowly making our species more miserable with each coming generation would take a thesis or two, or three. All of which I am prepared to write, but which none of you are prepared to read – I have sadly come to terms with the fact that this is the generation that thinks in Buzzfeed lists, tweets, filters and hashtags.
What I can do, instead, is offer you a fresh perspective: 98% of the things you spend 100% of your time worried about are completely irrelevant.
For one, the digital world is not real.
Emojis do not transmit your emotions, Instagram likes do not mean your creative eye is truly being appreciated by the world, the number of Facebook “Happy Birthday” walls posts you receive doesn’t equate to how many real friends you hold and the 30 minutes you spend editing your photos before posting them doesn’t do a damn thing to convince anyone (aside for yourself for a split second) of genuine beauty. It is a tough pill to swallow, but the moment you choke it down, the technological world becomes a lot less of a responsibility and lot more fun.
If you order an incredible cappuccino with a heart swirled in froth or hike atop a beautiful mountain, by all means, throw it on Instagram and let your friends check out what you’re up to. But always remember, they aren’t with you, the photo means nothing and the moment you are experiencing means everything. When the panic of receiving only 11 likes on a photo bubbles up in your stomach, tell yourself “Thank God everyone is living their beautiful lives and experiencing their moment instead of scrolling their Instagram feed. I hope they are having a blast.”
And then proceed to have a blast yourself.
We spend so much time tying ourselves to everything around us, both digitally and otherwise. The concept of being carefree involves lightness, a lightness that cannot be achieved with so many ties.
You currently have a specific potential for lightness that cancer patients do not – the lightness of health. Thankfully, you do not wake up everyday crippled with fear that today might be your last, but do you wake up with the carefree brilliance of someone with a beautiful day unfolding before them? No. Instead you wake up crippled with fear that today is not enough, your life is not enough and that you are not enough.
Make a list of everything you want in your life and then burn that shit, take out a new sheet and write “happiness”. It’s wonderful to feel attractive, ace all your exams, have financial freedom, “job security”, be in a relationship, etc., but none of those are guarantees and none of those equate to lasting happiness.
You get the choice to spend every waking moment of life figuring out how to manipulate the world and everyone on it to match your list, or you can choose to keep your list simple.
As a student and human being you have responsibilities that are sometimes incredibly daunting. You will have friends and lovers that will let you down and break your heart, and you have a vast life ahead of you that can seem scarily unknown. Face the things you have to face, but remember that the world or other people are not responsible for creating your happiness, you are.
Breathe a sigh of relief because the future doesn’t exist until you live through each moment one by one.
Look at every moment in your life with the utter surprise and carefreeness of the cancer patients seeing themselves with ridiculous makeovers, because sickness hasn’t stolen your flowing rush of joy, you have simply turned off the faucet.
Photo courtesy of: TheMimiFoundation
