This week I chose to talk about a pleasant feeling, and it was hard, because I am best at pain. 🙂
It’s a feeling that, for me, gathers delight, presence, mystery, and something that also carries a touch of the sacred. When it comes, I feel like I truly enter my life. That I am fully here. It feels like a single word cannot contain it.
In an older text, I called such a moment Haute Couture. Because it had refinement. It had that rare quality that makes a moment feel tailored especially for you. As if the ordinary had come to meet me dressed in silk.
This state appears in my life, just as it is. Among dishes, lists, children, exhaustion, chores, worries. It finds me exactly where I am. Exactly as I am. And for a few moments, I feel like I am living from inside my life, not just in it.
The first such moment I remember was when I moved to the Netherlands, in the studio on Beeklaan. I was on the couch, tired, surrounded by unpacked luggage, and I was filled with a pleasant feeling, one that came with quiet, with more than satisfaction, with presence and deep gratitude. I recognized something special in that moment and told myself I would remember it.
Another one was when I was walking down the street, nothing special. I passed by an old windmill, a communal garden, the sky was clear, and I wished I could share that magical moment of presence with someone. And strangely, my mind didn’t go to anyone still alive, because I didn’t believe anyone would understand what I felt, but to my grandfather. My impulse was to take my phone out of my pocket and call him. Then sadness took over, because my phone couldn’t reach him. And I felt a deep sadness layered over all the other magical emotions. I had a conversation with him without a phone. I cried and rejoiced at the same time. What madness life is, with all its emotions!
I lived such a moment surrounded by loved ones too. I had just moved into an apartment I was renovating. My sisters were with me. We had worked all day. All the stores were already closed. We decided to order Chinese food. We were starving by the time the delivery arrived. We had no table, no chairs, so we sat on some cardboard in the middle of the house to eat. When we opened the bags, we realized we had no utensils. We didn’t have any utensils, glasses, dishes, nothing. We did have a can of cola, which we washed and took turns drinking water from the sink after eating with our hands. The four of us laughed until we cried, and I don’t think we have ever been happier. It was a moment none of us has ever forgotten.
A few days ago, I was driving the kids home from school. Each of them was choosing a song, we had the sunroof open, and we were all singing loudly. The little one said, “Mom, we are living a very special moment right now!” I teared up. I had felt it too.
This is the state I am trying to talk about. It settles over an ordinary moment and brings it to life. It is a state in which I enter fully into the present moment. I feel it in my body before I become aware of it, before I can put it into words. I feel it, I breathe it, and I am present in it without reserve. In such moments, I let myself be touched by life, exactly as it is. I don’t think about the past, the future, I don’t wish to be anywhere else but there, in that moment. I stay there. I allow myself to feel that I am there. That that morning exists. That my body stands on the kitchen floor. That my hands prepare something simple and good. That life is not only what hurts me, what weighs on me, what scares me. Sometimes it is also this opening.
This beauty without a reason. This closeness to something greater that I wouldn’t know how to explain without ruining it. Something that makes me whisper: I am glad to be here.
And what moves me most is that this state doesn’t require perfect conditions. It can happen in an untidy kitchen, with dishes left from the night before, with messy hair, with children shouting and a full day ahead. It can happen exactly now, here, in my real life. Not on vacation. Not in an ideal version of my existence. Here. Precisely here. Exactly where I am now.
And that’s why I feel it has something sacred in it. Because it takes an ordinary moment and places a holy light on it. And for a few seconds, I see that my life, just as it is, already contains more beauty and depth than I manage to notice.