I love how casually our generation can start a sentence with “my therapist said” and no one bats an eyelid. No one says - wait a second, rewind, you’re going to therapy? No one asks for an explanation; not out of scorn anyway. Our parents could NEVER.
And so, the other day my therapist said that before making any decision, I should ask myself whether it feels heavy or light. Life has been feeling heavy recently, but not everything needs to be quite such a burden. The criteria for heavy and light can change, and sometimes we simply have to do the things that feel heavier - but whenever I get a chance, whenever possible I must choose the lighter alternative. So I tried and she was right about the criteria changing every time, so let’s walk through some examples:
Clothing - lighter meant both weight of the fabric as well as the colour so I’m wearing more cotton/linen and lighter colours. We even went shopping (perfect excuse)!!
Food - non-oily, non-spicy food eaten slowly, but it can also mean ordering in because cooking felt heavier.
Mode of transport - bike coz its cheaper but on days I’m tired or bleeding, I take a rickshaw.
Footwear - Birkenstocks all day every day unless gigs or music festivals (then it’s boots or sneakers); I don’t have a single pair of heels left in my wardrobe.
Exercise - I’ve been struggling to find out the sport/ method of movement I prefer having moved back to India (bouldering simply isn’t accessible here). I tried badminton and swimming, but yoga might be the one for me.
Romantic relationship - Ooof! This is a tough one because I had to ask for help (do you know how tough it is for first-born brown daughters to ask for help?) but I did. Surprise surprise (not), my partner is actually supportive.
Friendships - I’m only reaching out to people for whom it doesn’t feel like a chore, and those that take equal effort. By equal I don’t mean 50-50 at every point in time but in the zoomed-out view and with natural ebbs and flows have taken continued effort.
Work - This one is hard to admit and took me a while to get through, but I quit working for my family business.
It simply wasn’t it and it showed on my mental health. Taking this decision was HEAVY but I knew it was in exchange for something lighter in the long run (I marshmallow theory-ed the hell out of this and chose the 2 marshmallows). I’m now doing a part-time job that gives me enough time in the morning to explore avenues for my career and then my evenings look like this postcard below.
It feels much lighter, especially after I took 10 days of sleeping in and waking up without an alarm. It might not be a forever solution, might not be sustainable in the long-run but it’s not meant to be. Another thing my therapist said is that not all our decisions need to be with our future in mind because our present is just as important (flipping that marshmallow theory and choosing only 1 marshmallow now). This decision gives me space, autonomy, sense of self, fuels my curiosity and my creative block is withering away - as evident by the existence of this newsletter.
My tattoo artist summarised it perfectly - the gift of time is best of all. And me? I gave that gift to myself.
Encouraging you to make lighter decisions when possible,
Vedi
Hey I write from Homoromanticpoem and this meant a lot. More power to you. May you heal, live and do what makes you happy.
This makes me want to be easy on myself today ❤️