Someone recently asked me where my happy place is, where my mind goes when I’m stressed or sad or it’s 2 a.m. and I can’t sleep. I guess it’s something that people have been thinking a lot about lately, to stay optimistic in a time of such uncertainty. We want to think about easier times when things made sense and we didn’t spend our evenings waiting for death counts and wondering when it’ll be okay to visit our grandparents. I find that when people ask me about my happy place, it’s never just one place, rather a collection of my fondest memories and spaces from which I can pick and choose what I need at any given moment.
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Sometimes in my head its summer, and I’m in the passenger’s seat of a car with the windows down and the music loud and my feet are out the window, a gateway to the world where the road is open and endless. We’re passing green fields and it’s the time of day where everything turns golden.
Sometimes I’m surrounded by my family as we’re cooking or eating dinner or sitting outside by the garden. Sometimes when I’m there in my head I’m a kid again, and I’m running through the grass barefoot or getting pushed on the swing underneath the oak tree by the barn until the sky is dark and it’s time to go inside.
Sometimes it’s Christmas time and the house is warm and I’m wrapping presents in the soft glow of colored lights and I feel safe.
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For the most part, it’s not the “impressive” experiences I’ve had or the privilege of traveling to places that some people spend their lives dreaming about that I turn to. I would take an afternoon at my grandparents‘ house when I was small enough for my grandpa to carry me on his back over an afternoon glass of wine at a café in Paris any day. I see his agedness and crave those days more than anything else.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is that my mind goes a lot of different places, but wherever it is, it’s good. Goodness is not only found in grand gestures of kindness or in fancy places, but the little moments we let pass us by without stopping to look back. I hope that this is something that is not lost on us during this time. That sometimes it’s the things we didn’t realize would be so meaningful to us that we miss the most: the days spent hidden in treehouses and dancing in the kitchen and jumping in puddles. It’s the things that feel so ordinary and unspectacular in the moment that you can’t begin to grasp how beautiful it all is. I hope we can all get back to places like that, to the things that made us the happiest in the days when all we wanted to do was to grow up and move on and work harder. It’s the in-between moments that are best, but are not often painted with as much color and tenderness as they should be. If anything, I hope we can all adopt a simpler mindset after this is over, after we’ve had time to realize what it is we really need in our lives, and what moments we should be more present for, so that we can more vividly recall our happy places.
Muse & Musée 