So here I am about to hit the three month mark since I started this project [Not So Fast].
Three months, or 12 weeks, is a quarter of a year, and a whole retail season later. This is indicated by the longer days (with or without sunshine) and the email notifications of summer sales in my inbox. I can usually measure the passing of seasons as my last batch of new spring underwear I bought in March start to feel old and that new dress I bought with the promise of summer nights approaching is still hanging unworn, even though in my mind it already seems like yesterday’s news.
Not too much changes in three months time in the grand scheme of things, but it is enough that real progress can be measured, and results from the first dip of a toe in the water can finally become evident. It’s very motivating to see real, measured change. Way back there in April, I was still searching, still wondering, still praying. Praying for the moment when I knew I had it. When I knew what I was going to do next, for it had been bugging me for some time. I knew it would come to me, I just didn’t know how or when.
You see I suffer from a severe and unchangeable tendency towards intensity. I love fiercely (to those I love toughly you can attest), I work fiercely (being productive is not an issue for me), and I desire fiercely (often painfully so). I fuel myself by passion and interest, all with a healthy dose of extra intensity. When that extreme drive has no direct, positive outlet with which to pour itself into, that energy can, and will, go wildly astray. It manifests itself in me as desire, and without that outlet I speak of, mostly a desire for worldly goods.
Case in point my love for beautiful things, and my intense desire to pursue and attain the objects of my love and my passions (read: at times my love for shopping turns into a problem).
First of all, let me state that I love beautiful things. I love beauty in all forms. I love beauty in people, beauty in art, gardens, food, books, and other beautiful things, like clothes. I love clothes. Of course I know there are millions of others just like me, and after all, I am a girl and what girl (and some boys – maybe more than we realize) doesn’t appreciate beauty and love to play dress up in pretty things?
We spend countless hours thinking of outfits and planning our lives around who we see ourselves as in our heads. After a night with a cozy cup of tea and the new British Vogue, we curl up to sleep with hazy, romantic visions of our beautiful selves clothed in impeccably mastered style and (in our heads) entirely realistic and attainable glamour, imagining for a short time that our bold and limitless beauty can rescue us from our mundane chores and petty worries.
Cinderella had her dreams come true after all, didn’t she? What started as pure fantasy, born out of a girl’s life of humble service, became truth for her. This story is perhaps the most potent fairy tale that exists in our culture still to this day. And it’s still a story we read to our children, and it is a great story indeed. Dreams really do come true.
Magazines, books, movies, art and music are all beautiful and necessary compliments to life in our society and surely have their place in our home for entertaining, relaxing, learning, and often, pure, blissful escaping.
Fantasy is fun.
Sometimes when I get carried away with my life of fantasy, I have to stop myself. I have to remind myself that while appreciation for beauty and daydreaming compliment each other quite nicely, staying grounded is also just as important.
Actually, it’s more important. Especially for a dreamer like me.
Because at the end of the day, I am not that person I see in my head when I am planning my outfit for the next day. I am the girl who awakes to find that my body still aches a little from my last workout, my head is a bit foggy, and I need to pee. After I clumsily wash and stumble through fetching my first coffee, I wander into the bedroom to find a few clothes hung out from the night before. Sometimes, I put those on, but more often than not, I reach for something else. I reach for what I feel like, at the moment, in real time.
Because I am not the fantasy version of myself. I am me. Right here, and right now. I have only two legs. And I have only one body. I can only wear one pair of pants, one shirt, one pair of shoes.
I decide who I want to be that day, and every other day I do the same. Reality is made in real time. At any point in the day, we are all living live; carrying out real life in real costume, with words unscripted, and the beautiful lighting and flattering lenses hidden behind the curtain of each ticking moment.
So as much as I love my carefully curated selection of beautiful tailored jackets, hand made European shoes, and gorgeously styled leather handbags, I know that while they are beautiful in their own right, they are not me.
I am me. Pure and simple. In real time, right now.
I am not the girl I picture in my head after reading my favorite fashion blog, or catching up with my beloved Vogue. I love beauty, and beauty loves me. But I am only as good as that girl who wakes up every morning and decides who and what she wants to be.
And she can do that regardless of what (or who) she is wearing.
Three months ago I was still a little lost, still buried in my fantasies of grandeur, and feeling more and more empty as each misdirected purchase drove me further towards epiphany.
Three months later I am happy to see where I am. The changes are slow, steady, real, and happening. They are a beautiful thing to see, and they also happen to compliment my outfits quite nicely, thank you.
We can only be who we are.
This week I fasted for the love and pursuit of beauty, the real kind that exists in each glorious moment. Because as I get older, I find the original Cinderella in her tattered blue dress and her loose golden locks just a little more beautiful than the princess version, and a whole lot more appealing.
I will always love beautiful things, and I believe beauty can be transformational. But, for me anyway, it’s important not to confuse my desire for any material goods (no matter how fetchingly beautiful or well made) as a filler for what always lies at the pit of my stomach: the true and authentic desire to be a good human being.
Authenticity shines through any cover, no matter how you cut or stitch it. Surely, that is a thing of beauty.
Let’s be real. I know I am trying.
