Life Is About Subtracting

I’ve never been a huge Coelho fan, I preferred my authors to be more problematic, dark, troubled; you know those who are both destructive and melodramatic in the same paragraph, forcing you to examine your existential vows by weighing heavy on you. A ton.

Dark makes me content. Dark requires work. Shifting through. Shedding. All the layers. You feel like you’ve done the work. Light just sits there. We just need to come by it and recognize it. Light has no process. Light makes me anxious.

Call it a post-pandemic shift, are there even any rules anymore? Is there anything as we expect it anymore, are we what we expect from ourselves? There’s lightness I respond to now. A Coelho line I’ve heard so many times before. Borderline, platitude. This time I saw it in a different light(ness):

“Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about unbecoming everything that isn’t really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.” — Paulo Coelho

During the lockdown, we were all making all these resolutions — “when this is over”, “for when we come out”, back into the world. Promising ourselves we’ll do more, see more, achieve more, become more.

Become something we weren’t while in captivity? Become something we weren’t in the life before the pandemic?

Become?

Optimistic, only — this pandemic was a hard-earned lesson in unbecoming.

Life is about subtracting.

We came out of the lockdown euphoric, happy, joyous! Delighted to be out and about, all over the place. Touching people! Hitting all the parties, meeting everyone we could, day in and day out. No rest! And then the reality set around mid-August. I thought it was only me, but I’ve been collecting the same reports from almost everyone I know. I know it caught you too.

It was sudden. Euphoria just metamorphosed into — WTF’s. We realized, there are no real conversations. No kindness. No simplicity, no sense. People trying to be everything, now, before due process. Refusing to take a breather, stay home for a minute, sit, calm down, gather some thoughts, deal with issues after this long and hard year.

What happened? Wasn’t a pandemic suppose to bring us some sort of an awakening? Weren’t we suppose to get back to basics, realize what really matters, do better? Be better?

We got out of the lockdown running on adrenalin, instead of reason. With no real connections anywhere, just a week or two-long excitement over something or someone that vanishes faster than a slice of pizza at 4 am.

We were all disappointed with how unkind people have gotten. But how can they be kind to us when they’re unkind to themselves?

In mid-August, I went from deliriously going out, to self-inflicted, voluntary lockdown. House arrest, if you like. I came to a point when my body was feeling sick among people. Physically sick.

I decided to deduct. Unbecome. I didn’t go out at night, I would write all day, make great food, go to the park to walk, run, observe the beauty of a warm, slightly sticky summer night I’ve never noticed before. Everything looked different, and smelled better. I could never fully experience things before this experiment; I was always running to get somewhere, meet someone, missing the important things along the way.

All of a sudden I had all these hours unused that I can put towards doing things I’ve never had time for.

Also, I spent time entertaining no one. People could call me if they really needed something, but I did not spend one-minute partaking in pointless conversations. That opened up even more free time for me. I stopped talking to my parents who put me through hell the past year. That opened some more time, not calculated in hours, but peace of mind. My body was empty of stress and “conversations” on a loop I carry in my mind daily, pretending to talk to people who constantly do me wrong.

I haven’t had one thought or worry about trying to explain my mind to those who are determined to misunderstand me, due to their limitations.

Do you even grasp how much extra time, space, energy, and focus that creates?

I could hear the sounds in the park I never heard before, I saw textures I never noticed, I saw the color of the night that tasted like promise and admission.

I went to concerts alone, I went to plays, and performances; there was something almost sinister about how much I enjoyed not having to verbalize my experiences to another human being. It was just me, nothing could go wrong. No one can annoy you, upset you, or demean you. No one can waste you.

I started to enjoy my alone time so much, it started to scare me. Is this what life could be? Is this what I have been missing? The solitude I chose made me connect with myself so effortlessly, the answers just started piling up. What I need to do, and how I need to do it. I wasn’t frantically looking for answers like before, I just killed all the noise, and the answers came.

I wrote 19 chapters of my book in 3 months. After decades of thinking about which story to tackle, and how to outline it, the story just found me. And poured out of me. I didn’t write it, it wrote me.

All of our adult lives we’re succumbing to the expectation of becoming more than we are.

But who is placing those expectations?

We already have all the tools we need to become something. We don’t need to add more. We become it by subtracting. Removing unnecessary weight. Noise. Unbecoming what no longer serves us.

Subtracting unnecessary people, situations, emotional turmoils caused by others, and pointless actions that take us nowhere. Unbecoming everything that isn’t really us, so we can be who we were meant to be in the first place.

And if you think you’ll miss out on things if you remove yourself from the noise, you won’t. If you don’t, you’ll miss out on yourself.