notebook pg 16; a la bonne heure

on happiness and timing

In French, le bonheur means happiness, which also sounds like la bonne heure - at the right time. Happiness is temporary, and personally, something difficult to obtain, something to work for. A feeling so temporary, it’s scary to know that it can fall upon you when it is not the right time. Le bonheur qui tombe pas a la bonne heure (happiness that falls at the wrong time).

photographer: bet hardy

I celebrated my 20th birthday last week, oh, le bonheur. I never do anything for my birthdays, I don’t plan or organize events, I find it redundant, and most of all, as though I don’t deserve to have something good happen to me on my birthdays. I usually spend my birthdays sulking with inexplicable expectations.

But these expectations will never come true if I don’t do something, if I don’t move. My birthday falls on winter, and on exam season - a very unwelcoming time period. But this year, I did decide to do something. I planned an outing, just going to a restaurant with 5 other friends, people that I have shared laughter and good moments with, and it felt good. With everyone arriving a la bonne heure, everything went fine, as opposed to my overactive, overanalyzing brain that was scared of people’s eyes and their miniscule movements that may show some judgement. But, I was no longer a ball of stress, anxiously sweating, scared of judgement from people who I know would not judge me, on a day where they shouldn’t really be judging me.

Le bonheur, happiness was present, a feeling that is present rarely, a feeling that needs to be paired with the right time. Because if it is not the right time, is it still happiness? Situations can be defined as happiness, going out with friends and celebrating a birthday, connotations usually associated such as contentement, joy, and laughter. However, if my mind decided to sulk and fall down a rabbit hole of rejection, it would no longer be happiness - it is not the right time. Le bonheur est pas tombée sur la bonne heure.

A new decade will fall on me. I have no acceptance in myself, I still relive my nostalgic childhood, and I find it very strange that I am supposed to be an adult with responsibilities, and though I am capable of that, and it is what I do in my day to day life, I have responsibilities: I study, I work, I cook, I clean, I try to take care of my relationships with people, I study, I eat well. These things are normal in daily lives, very miniscule things that really shouldn’t be looked over more than this. But isn’t nostalgia painfully present? It is hard to be happy when it is not the right time, it is hard to be responsible when it is not the moment.

It is hard to be present when I am living in an alternate universe in my head. This is all to say that time passes way too quickly, and what I am doing is more or less dangerous. I will surely regret looking into my past way too much. Wanting to be a child again when I should be living in the moment. That it sucks that we grow up, that we have new expectations that fall on us, but it is what it is, and what can you or I do about it? 20 years have flown by, even though I can site almost every day, and what i did when I was a kid, even the lessons that I took in school, or the homework that I would do with my parents. I have the right to be bitter and melancholic - it was just yesterday that I desperately wanted to be 20, thinking that it would grant me instant freedom. It was just yesterday that I was on the living room floor, watching Cinderella on repeat.

Bonne chance avec le bonheur. Good luck with happiness. It is something children seem to easily possess, and something that seems to dissolve as quickly as sugar does in tea. There is no more visibility of this sugar, but that doesn’t mean it is no longer there. You just need to take a sip to realise that your tea is sweet, and not something to be judged by the nature of its physical state.

And I know that there are millions, maybe a billion people going through the same thing that I am, and that billions before me have gone through the same thing - no need to tell me twice. But is it strange that I long for something more, something further than this? Yet I am hypocritically here, living in my head that is 2010? This surely is my brain’s way of distracting me from the impending doom that is eventual death. “Oh, remember barbies? Nothing to worry about here! You could die in 60 years, or tomorrow, maybe even later, but enough of that, let’s think about Cinderella’s dress and give you some agonizing nostalgia.” Great coping mechanism, brain. Thanks!

And besides, it’s our first time living, do we seriously know what we are doing? And why we are here? I am very convinced that absolutely no one knows what they are doing, and that they are very good actors.

If you do, that’s great.

I surely don’t.

Thanks for reading!

ps. a playlist that i made if you like rap

really like the lyrics in a lot of these

xoxo, alia :)

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