Accepting Existence
Damn, my first blog post. Congrats on finding this tiny corner of the internet if you’re reading this and your name is somehow not Michelle (Theresa) Liu!
JoAnn Verbug, BIG PINK (A Lover’s Dream), 2020.
Yesterday, after finishing Haruki Murakami’s The Kidney-Shaped Stone That Moves Every Day, I felt a strong sense of peace. Which, to be honest, I haven’t felt very much in the past year.
I like to read on my bed with a notebook and juicy black pen next to me, and I jot down quotes or reflections when I find something I connect to. It feels so magical to see that another human being shares the same thoughts as me - when I can understand exactly what the author is trying to convey through the facade of a story. In Kidney-Shaped Stone, I found a striking sense of like-mindedness with the character Kirie, a woman who thrives off the exhilaration of tightrope walking.
Here’s the quote fragment, since Murakami (& his translator Jay Rubin) tell it much better (Kirie is talking about how she feels when she tightrope walks):
“The most wonderful thing about it is, when you’re up there you change yourself as a human being,” Kirie declared to the interviewer. “You change yourself, or rather, you have to change yourself or you can’t survive. When I come out to a high place, it’s just me and the wind. We accept each other and we decide to go on living together.”
Acceptance.
I think that’s something very rare and disdained nowadays - we’re always pushing to reach our own rigid expectations: I must get stronger, get richer, get ‘happier.’ But maybe sometimes the most serene peace can be felt by just accepting.
It’s been much better for my own mental health, at least. When everything seems like it’s spiraling into an incontrollable mess, it’s so refreshing to be able to let go. To just accept it, instead of desperately trying to force it into the mold of my own expectations. Accept it, and move on. Reflect. Change. Stay flexible.
The stiffest branch is the easiest to break. So just letting go helps me become stronger. (I think.) I don’t want to be that easy to break.
Addendum: October 6, 2021 - 11:04 p.m.
I just stumbled upon a quote that fit so perfectly with this post - here you go:
“We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.”
- CARL JUNG -