Being Nina Kaur

Shocking though it may sound, I opened up a book yesterday. It turns out books are still good. I think I’m going to explore this more again. Although I will tell you after watching so much TV, reading books where no one kills anyone or launders money for drug cartels in the first chapter seems kind of anti-climactic at first.  

I know, I know, it’s almost as if I was forsaking Netflix. But I felt like I had to do it to prove to myself that it was worth it to get my exorbitantly expensive college degrees. I forgot that a book can do stuff that TV cannot do, even the best TV, travel inside the mind of a human.

I read a post somewhere that as we read our books and binge on our TV shows during the lockdown, let’s remember that it was artists who got us through this. 

I feel like if I’m writing as much as I am lately, I need to read or my writing will not get any better. And that is bad news for anyone reading this. 

So I’m back to reading The New York Times, novels, poetry, non-fiction books. All of it. 

And I’m still antsy, not quite sure what my purpose in life is, and kind of bored. 

All this reading and introspection has taken me to the inevitable existential questions: Why am I alive? What does it all mean?

These are big questions. Luckily I have time. 

Right now, at this moment, the meaning of my life is trying to find joy. In anything. I read some accounts of how people are coping with being cooped up in their homes in The New York Times, it was delightful. Every now and then a person would talk about how they were having the time of their lives. 

It made me smile. 

Sometimes I listen to a song and everything makes sense, all of it. 

What does it all mean? It means nothing, people. We are making it all up. And that is as it should be. We are making up what it means to each one of us. My meaning is my meaning and yours is yours. And no one gets to tell me what my life means. I own that. And I can change my mind.

And if you don’t want it to mean anything, if you just want to live and tell me to shut up. Then that is the way it is for you. That is your truth. 

I often tell my students when teaching research that they are allegedly looking for ‘the truth’ but there is in fact no ‘truth’ there is only their truth.  They are searching for their truth about an issue after considering other’s opinions and facts. 

Let’s take this moment, this moment while we are locked up in our homes to think about what our truth is. What is it all about for us? Why do I even get up in the morning?

There was a time where I could not get up in the morning. Literally. 

What’s the difference now? My depression went away magically a year and a half ago when I started to write and meditate every day. It just disappeared. I think for me it is about connection, writing allows me to express myself to other people. Meditation allows me to connect with my higher self. 

What’s your thing?

It might not be a bad time to find out. 

You finally have the time. 

And time is a funny thing. There is no pressure here. Just exist. In this moment. Be. 

You may never again have the opportunity to sit. With no agenda. With no plans. With nowhere you have to go. With nowhere to go. With nothing to do. With no one to be but yourself. 

And I will ask you again, and again. Who is that person?

I only ask you because it reminds me to ask myself. In the silence when all the noise has subsided and everything has been said and we have felt it all. The pain, the glory, the love, the despair, the joy. After all of it, what is left? 

Who am I?

I am whoever I want to be. I am whoever I say I am.

I choose love. 

If you were to ask me in one word to describe what I want to be that is it. I want to be love. That is who I am. I don’t always know how to express that love in a way that is positive and even OK, but I am still love. That is still who I am no matter how I screw it up. 

When I come from love, even when I mess it all up, I’m still trying, I’m trying to love you here. I’m trying to love myself. I’m trying to love it all. I’m trying to love, love. 

The thing about love is that it is its own reward. 

Maybe this all sounds cheesy, too touchy-feely. Maybe you want to be strength or happiness, or all of it. Maybe you want to be none of it. Maybe you are just you. 

Maybe I’m just nina. And that is enough. Maybe I don’t need to be anything else, sitting here, in a room, with nothing to do, no one to talk to, nothing to say. I am just being nina. 

And nina is enough.

nina

What Keeps

C.D. Wright

We live on a hillside

close to water

We eat in darkness

We sleep in the coldest

part of the house

We love in silence

We keep our poetry

locked in a glass cabinet

Some nights We stay up

passing it back and

forth

between us

drinking deep

I have been featured in a new blog called, Corona Chronicles, check it out here…