Remembering warmth

I read a passage a few days ago in Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations that has been floating in my brain like a fluffy cloud, hovering over my other thoughts and creating a mental silhouette. Here’s the passage.

It’s a lovely reminder, a reminder of the insignificance of a lot of things going on around me. You see here I am, a 25 year old waging the daily war of adulthood (awfully dramatic I know), where I try to keep my career in check, my family and friends in mind, and the million different scenarios my anxious brain creates of my future.

I remember telling my friend after a long day of work that I forgot how to “relax”, that now that the working day is done and I have a couple of free hours before bed, I had no idea what to do with it. My head felt fuzzy and I had no appetite for thinking about anything other than the success or failure of my startup. Then comes this passage, after picking the book to just skim through it considering its light nature of small entries.

Here resided a reminder that there’s more to life than my thoughts and my concerns. It felt warm, and I started thinking about all the other times I had this feeling generated by the insignificance of my worries and concerns. I made a list:

• Every time I see someone dancing/signing in their car. More specifically, that one time I looked next to me while waiting at a traffic light, to see an elderly woman singing and dancing her heart out in the car next to me.
• Watching heartwarming movies that probably made a BuzzFeed list of “movies that will make you all mushy on the inside”, and finding new beautiful folk music that have an optimistic tone to them.
• Post work conversations with my teammates on how our work makes them feel, about how on some days, we feel like we do truly make some sort of difference through our startup.
• Making lists of things I want to experience and share with my partner, movies, music, grocery shopping, and many more. A list that grows faster than we could catch up to it but that’s my favourite part about it.
• Friends sharing exciting life goals, like how my friend decided to quit smoking and join a gym to shift his health around. More importantly, seeing him do it every day.
• Scaring my little nephews every chance I get to sneak behind them with a hug and a kiss, and asking them on how school was for them to just completely ignore me as they continue harassing their grandma for her phone.

There’s more to this list, there really is, and thinking all about it keeps me steady and makes me feel small (in a good way).

Feeling unimportant, realizing how small my stress is comparing to the world I get to be in surrounded by people I hold dear to me, is ironically really important.

In a world like ours, where bad news flood us left and right, and everything feels bleak on certain days, it takes actual effort to remember that there is still good for us in our world beyond our anxiety and stress. Maybe, just maybe, our best lives are spent doing good in this world and pursuing everlasting feelings of warmth.

With all these reflections, I leave you with a quote I love, to help you remember what life really is.

“Never be cool. Never try and be cool. Never worry what the cool people think. Head for the warm people. Life is warmth. You’ll be cool when you’re dead.” — Matt Haig