Lockdown Lessons: Chasing Dreams, Finding Happiness
I’ve learned a lot about myself during these quarantine days. Deep thinking goes along with being a writer, and I’ve been doing a lot of writing and a lot of thinking.
One day, out of the blue, I realized that I’ve spent my entire adult life chasing happiness, as though happiness were some elusive thing that had to be captured by surprise and bound close before it escaped again.
When you’re always chasing something, you’re never happy because you’re always grasping after that, over there, whatever it is you think you need. When I have a bestselling novel, I’ll be happy. When I have my Ph.D., I’ll be happy. When I have this other thing, I’ll be happy. I’ve had bestselling novels, and I have a Ph.D. Did they make me happy? Yes, for a moment or two. But it’s fleeting. The moment passes and I’m right back to who I was the day before, chasing after some new dream and feeling incomplete until I achieve it. I remember telling a friend from my Ph.D. cohort that in truth, the only place on the earth where it matters if you have a Ph.D. is on a university campus. Outside of a university campus, no one cares. Really, no one. I had this burst of brilliance while taking out the trash the day after my graduation ceremony. Here I am with this grand accomplishment, a Ph.D., and I’m taking out the trash like I always do. I was still going through my days like always. Of course I was. What else did I expect?
Mainly, this summer has been a lesson in letting go. Letting go of the life I thought I would have but didn’t. Letting go of relationships and friendships that weighed me down. Letting go of a job I thought I wanted, and then, after I saw that job from the inside, allowing myself to accept that the imaginary job I saw in my head was not the reality.
It took me two years to fully process the fact that this dream job was not what I thought it was. It was hard for me to let go. It felt like an amputation, as if I cut off this piece of myself that I held onto for so long. Even after I made the intellectual decision to leave the dream job aside, there was still phantom pain. Am I giving up too soon? Did I not try hard enough? Despite my lingering questions, all the evidence pointed to the fact that I made the right decision. With letting go, I’ve discovered the quiet joy that comes with leaving behind dreams that don’t fit my goals for an authentic life.
While I’m in the process of letting go of things that don’t bring me joy, I’ve also decided to ditch the hair dye. I’ve been thinking about it jokingly for two years and semi-seriously for about a year. Although the COVID-19 restrictions have been largely lifted, I’m not comfortable being in close proximity with someone so the hairdresser is still a no-go for me.
I’ve had concerns about the toxins in hair dye for years, and I’d always get welts on my scalp after my hair was colored. Still, like a well-trained consumer, I dyed my hair monthly for years because I had been brainwashed into thinking that I had to hide my gray hair from polite society. My hair started going gray when I was 19. For years I enjoyed going to the salon, trying out different colors—everything from blond to various shades of browns and reds, highlights, lowlights, even funky colors like purple and hot pink. Then the gray started growing faster and I’d have gray roots two weeks after a dye job.
When visits to the hairdresser stopped being fun I started using box color at home. That grew old quickly. I hated the mess, the fumes, the stained clothing and towels. Once I even stained my bathtub. I still don’t know how I did that. A few weeks ago I started looking on Pinterest for photographs of women with gray hair and discovered a whole movement of lovely ladies called Silver Sisters who ditched the hair dye and are happier and healthier for it.
I’ve come to realize that my life isn’t about impressing anyone. It’s not about being able to brag, humbly or otherwise, about my accomplishments. It’s not about worrying what anyone else thinks of my silver hair as it begins to peek through. It’s my hair and my life and finally, I realized that I get to decide what both my hair and my life look like. I want a life that is authentic for me. Just as with writing, there is no one size fits all for living. Yes, we should have goals, and we should strive to achieve those goals. Having something to work toward gives our lives purpose. But we should not allow ourselves to be defined by those goals.
It’s easy to get trapped on the ceaseless treadmill of expectations heaped upon us by family, friends, even strangers on social media. Compare-itis is a real thing and I’ve suffered from it as much as anyone else. To get off the treadmill means we have to be brave enough to listen to ourselves and no one else.
The most important thing I’ve learned is that it’s okay to let go. It’s okay to let go of dreams that didn’t materialize for reasons we may never understand. It’s okay to let go of goals that are unrealistic, unimportant, and unsuited to our most authentic selves. I hope this will be a lesson I will continue to carry with me post-pandemic, whatever that life might look like.
