For One of Those Days When I Don't Feel So Blessed

One lonely afternoon (Notre Dame University, Cotabato City; 2018)

I'm having one of those days when depressive feelings are getting the better of me. I'm almost six months in this place I call my temporary home; I'm half-way through my term. I should be celebrating my milestones here.  Instead, I have this I'm-not-okay feeling that I just can't brush off. 

It may be that part of me that's oversensitive, as my family would put it. It may be early golden birthday blues. It may be exhaustion  at work.  It may be crisis of limits. It may be anxiety over the future. It may be disappointment with myself. It may be exasperation over domestic concerns. I really can't nail it down right now. How strange I am. 

I'm not surprised then that when I stumbled on Jacob Norby's book, I felt an immediate resonance with it. I impulsively ordered a Kindle copy, which I hardly do anymore, and found the book speaking to me. No, somehow, it felt like Jacob was talking about me. I'm sharing here one of my early take-aways from the book.

Beatitudes for the Weird

Blessed are the weird people

- poets, misfits, writers, mystics

heretics, painters & troubadours -

for they teach us to see the world through different eyes.

Blessed are those who embrace the intensity 

of life's pain and pleasure,

for they shall be rewarded with uncommon ecstasy.

Blessed are ye who see beauty in ugliness,

for you shall transform our vision of how the world might be.

Blessed are the bold and whimsical,

for their imagination shatters ancient boundaries of fear for us all.

Blessed are ye who are mocked for unbridled expression of love in all its forms.,

because your kind of crazy is exactly that freedom

for which the world is unconsciously begging. 

Blessed are those who have endured breaking by life,

for they are the resplendent cracks through which the light shines.

(Jacob Norby, Blessed are the Weird: A Manifesto for Creatives)