Suddenly

This positive journal is already bearing fruit. Some were intended, like becoming less prone to anger or calming my obsessive ruminations. With others, I’m oddly surprised, up to the point that I wonder if my feelings are a mistake.

The initial task was crystal-clear: writing a positive entry every day of 2020 to create brighter and lighter habits. In the forty-eight days which, so far, this year has already had, I’ve produced thirty-six posts. Twenty-five per cent of this year I’ve failed. First because of the flu, later because life got in the middle. The 366 hashtag accompanying these entries is, technically, a lie.

During the flu I worried about it. Last week, when I skipped two entries, I promised myself to catch up a few days later. And yet, I didn’t. Almost two months after starting, the idea of obsessively counting seems a direct contradiction to the initial purpose of this blog. Somehow, centring on the number makes this endeavour a capitalistic task.

I don’t mind not having 366 entries by the end of the year anymore. In fact, I don’t mind having already failed if that means having reached, suddenly, some of that calm I was aiming at. Or instead of suddenly, ‘slowly’ may be a much better adverb after forty-eight days.

‘This idea of ‘better’ is the enemy of the good. You cannot become good. There is no ‘better good’ - you are either good or not good. But we are so conditioned to better ourselves, to become something. To be good now is to think non-comparatively, to observe without comparison. The observation of what I am brings about a radical revolution.’ — Krishnamurti, Public Talk 3 in San Francisco, California, 23 March 1975