Getting Sunburnt Teaches Me Why We're Unhappy

Getting Sunburnt Teaches Me Why We’re Unhappy.

I go in the sun a lot. 

So I usually cut off a piece of fresh aloe that grows right outside my apartment, put it in the fridge and use it every time I spend too much time in the sun.

But I’ve been out of aloe for a few weeks. 

All I need to do is walk outside, snip off a branch of aloe and keep it in the fridge.

But I haven’t done it.

So I go in the sun without using any aloe.

Again

And again.

And again. 

Then one day, my friend gets a boat.

I went on his boat for the first time on Sunday. I came home dead tired. 

I opened the fridge. No aloe inside. 

I decided to go to bed.

Well, 5 days later, I went on the boat again.

This time, it was hotter and we were out longer. 

I came home hurting from the sun. I snipped off the aloe before I got inside and rubbed it all over me when I got out the shower.

It was too late.

My skin didn’t have enough time to heal.

For the very first time in my life, I’m sunburnt AF

— 

Most of the time we don’t deal with our problems until it becomes urgent. Whether it’s replacing the empty bottle of shampoo, practicing self-care before our heart gets broken or following the voice that’s trying to tell us what we truly want.

We put it off for as long as we could. Because that’s what we do.

Being humans means we’re are always busy doing everything except for the thing we should do the most.

And as I lay here in the agony of my crispy skin, I’m reminded of the things I’ve been putting off. 

Things that I should be doing for myself but don’t because there aren’t any real consequences. 

And that’s all unhappiness is — an accumulation of incomplete tasks that feel like they should burn but don’t. 

If they did, we would eventually get to doing them. 

But instead, we go on with unpunished living and no specified pain. Is there a name for the type of pain that should be there? 

The pain of finding nothing to be unhappy about, yet happiness still seems like it belongs somewhere far away.

Once in a while, it’s important to check in and see if our inner self needs attention. That’s usually the root cause of the pain. Everything else is just its external manifestation 

What’s something you’ve been putting off?

A poem I wrote last week while camping 

Science makes everything ugly

Sky is light passing through atmospheric gas

Flower a reproductive organ

Life itself reduced to

molecules, elements & atoms.

So practical.

Why see the world that way?

When the sky is a portal to the universe.

Revealing itself in infinite,

Extraterrestrial beauty 

We can’t put into words

Literal stardust, 

It’s where we come from

18% carbon, 10% hydrogen

if you want the science of it 

But you forget, didn’t you?

Responsibilities, goals, and success

They cloud your memory

Got you sititng here thinkin’

“I am as good as the work I do,

the numbers I accumulate and

the things I give”

Reality bends itself backwards in your favor

Because you’re the creator of it all

A majestic, living being with infinite beauty

And the consciousness to realize it all

You and I,

How did we get so lucky?

To smell the flower, taste the fruit

and feel nostalgia when the leaves fall

Don’t we already have it all?

Chao ❤️