My insomnia kicks in on the strangest days. Today, after a week of insanely busy days at work, with a social calendar that's packed to the brim, I thought I would sleep like a baby. Fat chance. It's now 2:30 and I'm still awake; bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, willing to go out for a run, or a drink, or both. Probably not a good idea, but there you go.
So here I am, in a garret bedroom in Notting Hill, with the windows open on this warm summer night. My laptop is warm on my lap; the duvet lies pushed down around the end of the bed. I've got Florence + The Machine playing on Spotify, and a table fan whirring softly in the corner.
It's at moments like this that I have to love my life.
Nothing special, nothing important. Just a single moment when I can look around, at a life that I've built slowly, painstakingly, bit by bit. I've gotten to a place where I think I am, if not happy, then at least...serene, calm, comfortable.
Not content, though. Never content. Always trying, always struggling, always reaching. Things need to be done, places must be visited, lives must be improved upon. It is difficult to not always want to achieve. Especially when in my own head there are so many failures, so many shortcomings, to compensate for.
Dreams, ambitions, goals. All shorthand for the misery that we can cause ourselves by wishing for too much. For trying too hard. For staying so hooked into the whole system that we forget to stop and measure the moments, minute, infinitesimal, that make up this fragile life of ours.
I think it was a schoolteacher - one of the Dominican friars at my Catholic school in Namibia - that introduced me to the Latin saying, per aspera ad astra. To the stars through difficulties. The same teacher told me that if you aimed for the stars, you'd get to the treetops.
And I always wondered how unsatisfying those treetops would be, especially when you kept looking at the stars that you missed out on.
