Last Thursday, I woke up to the sunrise after a really long time. The early rays of the rising sun was just starting to seep in through the textured glasses of my Airbnb’s window. I watched the patterns it was creating on the floor for a while before I put on my sandals and decided to head out.
It is my birthday and I am giving myself a precious gift — a chance to take myself out on a date.
Freelancing can be tough. Between meeting clients, answering calls, writing content and sending invoices, you can easily lose track of time, life and everything that comes in between. I did too in the last two years. The fleeting attempts at trying to find break and rest stopped seeming enough for me to recharge. I knew I needed to get away — to close all the tabs open on my laptop and put it away from sight before I collapse from overwork. And that’s what I did today — no laptop, not much time with the phone except for the few birthday calls and messages.
I am in Auroville. A place I could describe in a hundred different ways but for now, it just meant solitude in the heart of nature for me. I walk to the seating area in Auroville, a place next to Dreamer’s Cafe with stone benches and desks nestled under this ginormous Gulmohar tree. I grab a quick filter coffee from the cafe and sit down to enjoy the morning.
There’s hardly anyone around and I’m glad. I am enjoying this blissful early hour with myself. It is almost funny how I’ve come to realize that I’m my favorite company. After years of fighting and hating my flaws and drowning in insecurities, here I was knowing full well that I love my alone time, my company more than anything else in this world. This blissful moment under a tree that must have seen so many generations before you and me felt like a perfect place to be on a solo date.
I took slow, deliberate sips of the coffee and looked at the things around me. The brown-furred mongrel cleaning its paws ever so gently, sitting on a stone bench a few feet away from mine. A lady in a traditional saree with sweet-smelling jasmine braided into her hair, sweeping the place, getting ready to welcome visitors for the day. A bed of yellow flowers raising their heads to smile at the sun. And the distant melody of a life-sized wind chime hanging from a tree a couple of yards away. There was just so much for my eyes and ears to take in.
This is one thing that my passion for meditation and mindfulness has taught me. Focusing on my senses and its experiences is one of the most accessible ways to arrive into any moment; to slow down the chatter in the mind — the planning for the future and the questions about the past — and just be. I’ve learnt overtime, with conscious practice, to tune into what my eyes were seeing and my ears were hearing to slow down. This beautiful morning too, that’s exactly what I did. Oh! And I forgot taste.
I was taking a sip of filter coffee after a really long time. “You need to be off caffeine, reduce milk and wheat consumption”, my Ayurveda doctor had told me 8 months ago. I had reached out to her at a point where I had begun to distaste coffee, bread and cheese. There was a time when I relished morning buffets, booking myself breakfast buffets at 5-star hotels that felt like too luxurious a spend and savoring 2–3 cups of coffee with bread, croissants, eggs, sausages and cheese. But slowly, even the thought of that meal made my tummy sick. I didn’t think I needed to find out why or how to get better until something else had me virtually talking to an Ayurveda doctor who also suggested I limit the intake of milk, caffiene and gluten for a while. In three months of following her advice, I was able to enjoy these tastes again but I kept myself away from morning coffees anyway.
This day was an exception though. And exception not because I chose to flout my personal rules but because I finally felt the urge to have a cup of coffee in the morning again.
Well, the coffee was delicious, to say the least. Maybe a little extra delicious given the backdrop in which I was having it.
An hour has passed and there still aren’t too many people around. I’m starting to feel the heat of the sun set in but my world has slowed down so much, I am just reveling in the moment.
It is also the time when I am not consciously thinking. But I’m watching my thoughts. It is almost as if there is this entire flow of conversation happening within me but I’m only a silent spectator. Whatever striking came out of the conversation, I noted them in my diary. I knew how important this moment and those thoughts were. I have experienced these moments before that only come to me when I have slowed down to the point of hearing silence.
What makes the revelations during these moments precious is the fact that I’m not logically thinking. It is as if my knowing, my body is sharing wisdom that is hard to hear in the chaos and noise of everyday life. And more than anything else, these moments have gifted me most of the best decisions of my life. To a far more logically driven person, these decisions can seem impulsive. But I know they are more than that. I know these feelings that originate somewhere in the depth of my tummy and which always feel like the voice of my truth, tell me things I need to hear.
So there I was with a diary, jotting down ‘ahha’ moments and realizing how much I missed these moments in the last few years. After that, I spent the next two hours gobbling down a book by Susan Tweit, Walking Nature Home.
There came a point by 12 when the place was bustling with people and the sun was scorchingly hot. I knew my solo date had to end here. But I hope this marks the re-beginning of more such dates when time doesn’t matter, when who I am, what I am doesn’t matter, when what needs to get done and what I did doesn’t matter. I just exist, in that moment. And that’s it. That’s my perfect date.
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