I wrote this title before any idea had occurred to me of the type of words that would sit underneath it. I hope the following ones do not weaken it. If that ends up being the case, simply allow the sun to burn your face as well, as it is a wonderful thing.
—
I took myself to a café this afternoon. I had some hours to spare before a class and I felt that I needed the time by myself. Once I picked up my coffee, I instinctively turned towards the window seat. It was one of the few tables completely soaked in heavy 3 pm sunlight. Nobody else was in the café but a girl studying and the owner, so I didn’t feel as though I was taking away the table from a couple or two friends. But, still, I paused before placing myself there.
I ended up sitting and absorbing the much-needed sunlight for almost two hours with my book and journal. I left with more spirit than I had entered the café with (which is all one can ever hope for, no?). But now, in the night, alone in my room, I am examining that pause. One not caused by hesitancy, nor fear, briefly blocking me, but a feeling that I can only attempt its translation as, “Do I deserve this?”
If deserving stems from what I’d done previous to the split-second moment of staring at the empty window seat, who can say? I’d woken up early to meet a friend for bagels, caught the bus back to my apartment, worked out, showered, and eaten the bagel that I’d intended to eat later in the week. So, no, I hadn’t done many spectacular things that would merit a capital R Reward. But a reward as simple as a sunny, available seat in an empty café, maybe?
So what would have made me feel undoubtedly worthy of the seat? Perhaps if I had finished the series of drawings that glare at me from the far wall in my room. If I was better at Spanish than I often feel I am. If I took some things more seriously, and others less. Maybe the completion of these tasks, and others, would have shortened, or erased altogether, the pause on trial. But as is the thing with tasks of the past, new ones eagerly take their place.
If we all chose to take the sunny seat only when feeling deserved of it, how starved of light we would be. And, even worse, with no one to blame but ourselves. If we refuse ourselves light, what is left for us but lack thereof?
Thus, the sacredness of my simple decision to take the time to take myself to a café and take the seat in the light is based in the simple fact that I chose to. I chose to above all else. And maybe the moment in the café doesn’t deserve these words, this time spent on it, but I am choosing to write them, and that is making all the difference.
Sitting there, the sun felt as though it was burning into the left side of my face. I put my hand up to my forehead many times, casting dark shadows on my face, trying to displace the light for a bit. But feeling my hot skin while squinting at the painfully bright pages of my book, I could not imagine being anywhere else. These tender, insignificant moments that we have brought ourselves to, are all we have.
I’d brought myself there, I’d let the sun burn half my face, and now I have written a few words about it. And I think that the most beautifully troublesome part about it all is that I could have easily done otherwise.
—
There are many things about this lived experience which seem to happen to us. Although, on second glance, we are equally happening to them. With every death, our reaction to and experience of the death. With every conversation, our half of it. With every ray of sunlight cast on us, our letting ourselves be cast on.
