"Fish don't have drama"

Scuba diving is probably the most rewarding experience a person can get. It's euphoric and liberating; it's an escape from the World of pettiness, cruelty and most of all...drama. There’s a sense of peace and serenity under the waves, and so deep below where the water turns black and all that’s left is that coldness rubbing against your wetsuit and the millions of different species swimming by your side. More importantly, it’s quiet. You don’t swim by fish and see them gossiping or judging you. There’s no such thing as a social “faux-pas” under the water. However, the time you have under the water is unfortunately limited by the tank you carry on your back- oh Oxygen, why are we dependent on you! Anyways back to the point, fish don’t have drama. Us- humans- we’re all about drama. Even those who say “I hate drama” secretly love it on the inside, just that taste of feud and friction is like a driving force for most people. Why are people so hostile? It’s like the thing to do these days, almost as bad as a fashion statement. Ugh. And the scary thing about drama is no matter how much you try to get away from it, it’s always catching up with you and clouding you with its heaviness. So, do I want to be a fish? Of course not, but I sure as hell enjoy being 130 feet deep under water where all I can hear are my thoughts, and the fish give you that room and space to breathe, relax and think. Space being the operative word. I really believe you appreciate the world more when you’re under the water.

Drama. It’s everywhere. In the office, at a café, at airports, on the street…but not under the water. Under water, tranquility and harmony prevail. Today’s world above water is getting smaller too (thank you facebook, twitter etc…!) and it gets harder to keep personal things personal. I get the whole “social networking” thing but when drama is an added ingredient it just becomes, well, pathetic. It’s a place where self-involved people find delight. So yeah, I like hanging out with the fish more. They swim by me quietly and just get on with things.... people need to get over things and get on with the important stuff. Ha! So unlikely. People love drama.

“Unfortunate Realities”

It’s breathtaking right? Almost picture perfect, definitely post card material. Being able to stand there and take this snapshot was surreal, but I couldn’t get it out of my head. That thought. The same thought I got when I went to Paris and saw the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, when I went to Washington D.C. and saw the White House. That thought. The thought in my head saying, “Seriously, that’s it? It’s that small?” It’s just as bad as when I went to a live taping of a talk show like Jay Leno and was part of the audience, and in all that excitement all I could thing about was the size of the room. “Why does it look so much bigger on TV!”

Oh, the realities of life.... such a disappointment. Or maybe it’s because we have such high expectations or formulate our own images of what these monuments look like before we actually visit them? Why do we do that, anyway?

“Work. Life. Love. Ants…” (Part II)

Part II

Ideally, having none of them in an apartment would make for a blissful life, but nothing in life is ideal so you have to make a choice. At this point the anxiety sets in and you start to remember that feeling you felt the first day you got the keys to the apartment. You feel anything but the sense of accomplishment and begin to realize that the things you’ve wanted for the longest time are the hardest to maintain. These bugs parallel your social life: In high school it was that pest who wouldn’t leave you alone; in college it was the swarm of people that would pick on you, and in the working world it’s your seniors that infest your office space. In retrospect, wouldn’t you choose the poor girl who wanted nothing more than to be your friend? You work your way up and try to step on the little things to lead a happy life, only to find more obstacles in your way. But you make a choice. Yes, you bite the dust and accept the challenges that life throws at you. It’s the only way to move forward (right?). Of course we prefer the ants; they are easy, harmless, and practically invisible. They are the easy way out. You buy a can of RAID and poof, gone like magic. Again, you make a choice. You either stay home forever, or accept the keys to your new apartment and fight as hard as you can to make it work. That goes for the social life too, there’s no more looking back…just forward.

So there it is… independence. Work. Life. Love. Ants…

“Work. Life. Love. Ants…”

Part I

You know the feeling you get when someone hands you the keys to an apartment for the first time? You get this inner feeling of accomplishment because for the first time, something is yours. It belongs fully to you and you get to be the first one to make a mess of it. Of course, like all things in life, making that mess never comes easy and the challenges you face parallel the everyday challenges that we struggle with to survive. It starts with ants. Yes, ants. There’s that little one in the corner and you think, “It’s OK, it’s just one little tiny harmless ant”. Then you wake up in the morning and find a trail of ants in your apartment and realize they aren’t little irrelevant things anymore, they are there and as long as you do nothing to get rid of them, they are there to stay. Scary thought. So then life becomes a struggle in which you try to do everything so you don’t “get ants in the apartment” and for months you buy in to all the products to get rid of them. Months go by and the ants disappear but a new species takes over. The spider. So you’re doing the independent thing and accessorizing your apartment and you cross paths with it. The apartment gets filled with spiders visiting you, with their long legs crawling all over your bathroom floor, kitchen sink, and your favorite (and only) couch because, “it’s the season”. At this point you think, “Those ants were nothing compared to this”. So more months go by and you’re stuck with them. You spray them with anything you can find just to get rid of them (yes, sadly even perfume) and then one day you get back from the end of a long exhausting day and walk in to an apartment swarmed with termites. Suddenly, 3 or 4 random spiders don’t seem bad at all or those poor tiny ants. You never think you’d get to a point where you say, “I prefer the ants”.