‘in tune’

As the noise around me faded, I felt starkly alone with the thought, “How did I even get here?” When all the activity and busyness came to a pause, I realized I hardly knew why I was doing it at all. That realization terrified me. But at the same time, it felt more truthful than everything else occupying my mind. Like a sobering draught, I felt ill at ease with the newfound clarity, but more in tune with life than I had before.  

As I walked down the street, the pace of my steps slowed, my muscles too fatigued to stride. Involuntarily, my chest lifted into a deep sigh. I noticed the new buds of spring perched on tree branches. I wondered if, for the longest time, I had been looking down as I walked, earphones in, tuned out to the world around me. It was a default way of life, not necessarily bad. A survival mechanism, perhaps, in an overwhelmed world. 

  The gentle warmth of spring was a reprieve to the damp cold of winter, precious days before summer’s intensity beat down. How much longer would the world exist like this, I mulled. How ready was I for all the change that would come, I thought rather nonchalantly. It felt as though the world and everything in it was moving around me with the same unpredictable rhythms.   

But it hardly frightened me the way it used to. It was as though I was throwing my hands up on a coaster as the drop approached. Giving myself over to the tides of change.