cherry blossoms don't wait for you
these days i find my life to look somewhat like a series of to-do lists. get better at sleeping, get better at meditating, hit the gym, hit your quotas for improving your skills. finish your work, get better at your work, be kinder tomorrow. pick up groceries. pick up furniture. take care of yourself, hit the shower. this friend hasn't seen you in a while, that friend is going through something rough, reach out, fill up that friendship bar.
it's a common sentiment and i usually don't mind. however, i was bothered by this drive for completion when i went to see cherry blossoms on my own recently. you can't stop the seasons so you go see the blooms when they happen, not when you get the chance. i felt this desire to go see them, i just had to catch a glimpse this spring so that i would feel that i've sufficiently stopped to smell the roses (or the blossoms in this case), and i also felt the time pressure of the blossoms only lasting a week or so, so i seized a spare hour, ran to the grove and stayed awhile by myself, but i only felt fleeting satisfaction. i wished i had more time in that grove to read or work on something that i cared about, not to just walk around and look at the blossoms.
the set of things that are important to me are dwindling fast, and i feel more focused on a smaller set of things than ever before. partner, family, friends, career, health, sanity, moral virtue. that's it. when something is out of whack i try to prop up that part of myself and i often feel better afterwards. no more complicated soul-searching at niche meetups and certainly no clubbing or staying up late watching tv.
the cherry blossoms feel important to the "sanity" category but i wonder if i'm just going through the motions by making a checklist item out of it. does sanity get preserved through consistent, diligent action towards the explicit goal of staying sane? perhaps the same kind of action you might take when meticulously completing a checklist? certainly, yes, but your systems for self-improvement must be extremely sensitive to feedback so that you keep moving in the right direction. in this case, "smelling the roses" felt like an extra task that kept me from calmly moving through life today, so i don't think it's going on the list next year. if the "sanity list" stops working altogether then i'll figure out a new system.
this feels like an overly complicated way to say, the cherry blossoms were pretty but they're much more fun to see with friends and family.