Listen, I won’t go on about worldly wisdom. I’ve lived too briefly to be giving out life advice and just long enough to know that advice should only be given when it’s asked for. But on this one, you’re going to have to trust me: If the most beautiful woman in the world asks you to dance, dance.
This New Year’s Eve, I’ve done something I’d never done before. Over the course of six to eight hours, I mixed seven different substances in my body, three to five of which might be considered illegal depending on the Western state you find yourself in. This was new for me, so I decided not to innovate too much and spend the rest of the party in true me fashion, melodramatically sinking into solitude while brooding over existential thoughts.
I’ll spare you a glimpse into those inner workings; I’m already familiarised with my brain’s body of work, so having another person learn the ropes would be largely inefficient, let alone very ill-mannered of me to throw somebody under the bus like this. Now I know, I know, a good manager knows how to delegate, but Napoleon delegated naval fleets to Villeneuve who went on to butcher them at the Battle of Trafalgar and ruined any chance of invading Britain… and you can say many things about Napoleon, but he certainly wasn’t a bad manager!
What I’m getting at is that I didn’t have the very best time at that party and that’s alright because I seldom do, not really. I think I rarely feel lonelier than I do at these gatherings because that’s when you’re surrounded by the largest amount of people with none of them being your person – if that makes any sense. Mind you, I still attend because how else do I find my person if not by putting myself out there? (I’m just not the newspaper dating ad kind of guy, and its modern-day derivative, Tinder, doesn’t do it for me, either.)
Some days, you’re just off, and the last day of last year happened to be one of them for me. You’ll have a thousand of them in your lifetime, so learn to be gentle with yourself and wait it out. Learn to not worsen it by pressuring yourself into having to feel better and quickly. Energetic, on-point days are your fuel on the way to whatever goal you’ve set out for, so missing out on them feels like standstill, but you have to allow for it. A bad day is your spirit taking a vacation from the hard work it does, let yourself have it.
So now that we’re done with that esoteric-crap-sledgehammer of a paragraph, I’m going to put it into perspective. I do actually believe what I wrote there, though voicing my opinions without being asked clashes with my deeply ingrained embarrassment at the narcissism of regarding my own opinion worthy of being voiced. (I still cringe at the very idea that I write a blog. I genuinely reckon a rather fine Englishman was lost on me.)
You should be comfortable with your choices. You shouldn’t go somewhere you don’t want to go, do something you don’t want to do, dance when you don’t want to dance. You should do you.
Be that as it may, there are exceptions. Sometimes your being gentle with yourself will trade-off with your being a sloth who is given a chance by the universe and needs to grow a pair and take the leap. At any given point in time, life happens now, and telling it you’ll come in again later and to please wait with your order won’t cut it. It’s not always easy to distinguish when a situation requires you to get over yourself and step up, but sometimes it is, and I’ll give you a headstart on this particular list so you can avoid feeling like a moron for roundabout a month (and counting) afterwards:
If the most beautiful woman drags you towards the dance floor and asks you to dance with her, you dance, you idiot.
This blog was… how do you say it? Relevant!!
Finally I’ve found something that helped me. Cheers!