Chapter 2: Stressed But Content

I remember that back when I was 14 (or something like it) I had a bit of a grudge against the phrase “How are you?”. I disliked how casually such a supposedly caring question was generally asked. I dislikes how hard it was to answer such a simple question. I dislikes the speed at which conversations died after this initial attempt. As an alternative I think I often started conversations with instead a critique of the very comment itself.

Now? I’m no longer 15, I am less insistent on loudly protesting various contrived dislikes of the world. I’m often curious about how the people around me are and I will shamelessly ask: “How are you?”

—

It’s the end of another weekend that had so much more potential to be productive at the start. So how am I?

Stressed but content, is what comes to mind.

I like this answer.

If you had asked me on Friday I might have said “stressed out of my mind”.

If you had asked me Saturday morning I might have said “miserable and stressed”.

If you had asked me Saturday afternoon I might have said “running out of time.”

You see, on Saturday afternoon my parents had cobbled up an excuse to go out for dinner on the Mornington Peninsula. (Mum has a new job, my sister needs driving hours.) I had lamented at the loss of a whole half day to something unproductive as sitting in a car for an hour or two just to have a long drawn out dinner and then come back via the same wastefully long drive.

But I went.

—

“Dad there’s just a park there.”

“There should be a parking here.”

“There’s just a park.”

“No! There should be some parking here. I know where I’m going.”

I’m not sure Dad know’s what he’s doing. There’s not restaurant here. There’s a little gravel drive, (cleverly hidden behind a bus of rugby players in such a way that we had to U-turn twice to find it and get into it.)

“Yup, this is it,” says Dad.

There’s not restaurant here.

“Where’s the restaurant, Dad?”

“It should take an hour to walk to this lookout and back.” He points at the map.

The restaurant is half and hour’s walk away? I’m confused.

“There should a be a wetlands… and a boardwalk…”

Oh! It turns out it were going for a walk in the wetlands before dinner.

I race my sister along the track weaving among the dense trees.

“Where’s the boardwalk?”

“It’s a bored walk. You’re supposed to get bored. Haha. Get it?”

“Groan.”

And then jumping out from around the corner, there’s a sign: “Caution. Slippery.”

What’s slippery? The gravel? Pfft.

But then I find myself trotting out onto a board walk, the dense trees vanish and quite suddenly before us is, as far as the eye can see, low lying water plants, a pale sky with pink plumes of smoke in the distance and the quiet rustle and gurgle of water things. It’s beautiful. And suddenly it was worth coming all this way.

My father and sister power walk ahead, but I find myself lingering behind, drinking in the beauty. Sure the city has it’s beauty especially in the (now chilly wintery) mornings, but it takes a vast and magnificent landscape such as this to truly remind you of the breathtaking craftsmanship of the world. How can one, in the face of this, not feel as if everything will be okay.

“It will be okay,” says the gently swaying feathers of the water grass flowers.

“It will be okay,” says the pink-grey heron that circles the sky with slow elegant beats of the wing.

“It will be okay,” says the golden light reaching out to the water and the leaves.

 

When I am down and oh my soul so weary, 

When troubles come and my heart burdened be, 

But I am strong when I am on your shoulders, 

You raise me up to more than I can be… 

I’m not sure I have the right words in the right places, but I sing the words of a song we learnt in choir was we walk back to the car.

It’s a beautiful evening and I wouldn’t rather spend my time any other way.

—

It’s Sunday evening and I have a stomach ache. How am I?

Stressed but content.