26 y.o. Found Diseased After Following Advice Too Well
I know a lot of people who like to throw out cliched pieces of advice to who ever is within earshot: “You always order the same thing every time! Be a little adventurous!” or “You should really live in the moment!” etc, etc.
It annoys me - mainly because I let it influence me and, in typical Zahra-fashion, I then take this advice to the extreme until my own judgment finally sneaks in and sets me straight. For example, for years I would go to a restaurant and avoid my favorite dish like it was the plague. Or, worse yet, I would avoid the restaurant altogether if I’d visited even once, all because the “you’re so NOT adventurous” judgments would haunt me and guilt me too much to enjoy it. What a waste! Now I say, to hell with being “adventurous” - eat what you love - what’s the point otherwise??!?! What were those people thinking??!!? On behalf of years of skipping pad thai: ugh I’m so annoyed.
Recently, I have come to find that “living in the moment” also has its faults:
In my last trip back to the US, I realized that I have a very difficult time merging my two lives. I have a separate set of friends, memories, favorite spots, and idiosyncrasies associated with both my life there and my life here in the UK. What I spend my days thinking about, my time talking about and my nights reminiscing about (despite having ME as a person and mind in common) are mutually exclusive. And because I do such a good job of living in the moment, I immerse myself completely in one situation or the other and like a fish in water - it becomes the world I am used to, the one I belong in.
That is, until I take a plane ride back to my other life and then become a fish in that water instead.
The problem with all of this is that inevitably, the life I’m not swimming in tends to fall by the wayside. My calls home become less frequent (one time I hadn’t talked to my brother in over 6 weeks until I got a call from him updating me about how he’d been hospitalized), my friendships get placed on hold while lives continue to be led, and eventually things that used to be important start getting brushed off like birthday phone calls, regular life-updates, and just being a friend.
(I mean, I spent a month and a half in the US and suddenly I couldn’t remember what university my roommate is studying at next year or how much a tube ride costs. What time are prayers again?? Wait, you had a boyfriend and broke up with him already? Wait, wait, what??)
It’s not cool - especially because my semi-permanent move back to the US means that I will need to be aware of this debilitating piece of advice, this “living in the moment” drama, lest I lose the wonderful bonds and memories I have accumulated these past two years.
Well, until my moment-living-itis is cured, at least I can say that for a kid whose teachers always complained that I didn’t follow directions very well, the adult in me isn’t doing too poorly.
