Ocean & Boat

I asked her, how she can be happy again? Content and peace.

Then she said, "I've come to a metaphor about feeling - an ocean; deep and dark, like our feeling. Our heart. We never know where is the end. It is indeed, dark and deep too. And by not knowing where is the end, is a danger for us. So, that's why, on the ocean, we sail a boat. The boat is like our shield; we can feel the breeze of the ocean, the air, the atmosphere, and we can feel the droplets too. And that is safe. But when you try to swim; ok you need a safety jacket. You will drown if you are not wearing that.

The same goes for feeling. As we do not know where is the limit of our feeling, we tend to harm ourselves without lifesaver. We are the controller of our feeling, so we are the sailor of our 'heart boat'. We are the ones who put a limit on ourselves. Every time we feel drown and suffocated with the overwhelming affection, pull ourselves back to senses. Hold our breath and exhale; that's our safety jacket. When we were in the fascination of feeling, sometimes we cannot differentiate right and wrong. Our senses and brain are clouded by our temporary judgment. Our amazement to beauty can manipulate our perception. But hold on! That will not last forever. Wake up, you will drown."

She looks at me. Holds breath and continues.

"I was once like most of us. Lost and misdirection. I took more than a year to realize that, I was just romanticized my past. I was not holding on to reality. I know, the detachment was hurt and painful. The separation was agonizing and indeed, I got hysteria several times. I lost my senses, I admitted that. I then took a month break and hibernation from social media, find myself back; even until now I am still finding myself, my passion, my career path. And I realized that that journey never ends. It requires most of the lifetime and effort to go back to our own two feet. But believe me, once we find it, we will be the happiest person in the world. Even an inch of the destination."

She smiles.

"Do you hide your wounds?", I ask.

She chuckles a bit. She sips latte and put it back on the desk. "The key to being happy is, never to hide your feeling. You happy, you embrace it. You reward yourself. You sad, you cry. You mad, you tell that person. But as I said before, don't be overwhelmed. There is a limit to it. When you are happy, you show and pass back to your life. Feelings are temporary. It comes and goes. That's why don't be too attached to it. Our lives are more than that.

When you know how to love yourself, you will tell people how to love you - without manipulating and changing you for a person that you are not. You will find a person that accepts you, for who you are, inside and outside. And the same goes for us. We will learn how to tolerate and considerate with people more. We learn how to accept people, like how we want people to accept us."

I can see her eyes sparkling. She has nothing to lose but herself.

"Do you ever feel regret?"

She looks at me. "Of course, and that's what made me, me. But as I said, it just a feeling. It just an ocean. Our senses back when we land on the boat, or when we reach the land-land." We laughed.

I sip my coffee. I come to the conclusion that that's the beauty of us. Allah grants us a life that constitutes of past, present, and future. We learn from the past; what good we take as memory and what bad, still we take as a memory but more lesson learned. The present is where we put our hundred percent attention and courage to do the best. The future is where we determine to not repeat the same mistake and always hope we do better. 

I want to sail my boat alone for now. Because in solitude, I find myself.

I always question myself, 'how can a person be happy with someone else when they, at the first place never feel content with themselves?'.

Dan bak kata Taylor Swift, "the best people in life are free.", so don't cope and cave ourselves. Let's find new hobbies, new passion, new stuff to learn because as an ocean, we thought we already sail the whole of it, but believe me, we just go through one over thousand from it. That's more to explore.