Living intensely doesn’t mean living a busy life
Why “healing” only springs from intense living
Living intensely doesn’t mean living a busy life. Living intensely means the ability to think with your flesh, to cherish the mundane, to add meaning to the ordinary, to have a mystical relationship with the present moment. Who lives more intensely and more authentically amid the vital confusion of existence? The one who succeeds in educating their feelings by making them wilder rather than more restrained—in a world of infinite standardization, one must strive to avoid forms and categories to stay sane. You don’t control your emotions; you let them possess you—but to what end? What’s the revolution? What’s the festival? Falling in love with the mundane and the ordinary, with what everyone else fails to see as magical.
JARED ENTERS THE MARKET although he doesn’t need anything. He’s quite certain he saw Wendy inside. They haven’t seen each other in quite a while. Jared no longer yearns for her the way he used to. Wendy was wearing little makeup, a yellow shirt, a baggy pair of jeans, and dirty green sneakers. Quite a few months have passed since they initially made out. Now he’s dating a Hungarian girlfriend who always cooks for him and feeds him well. She’s at her parents’ home during the weekend in Debrecen. This gives Jared a false sense of freedom. He pretends he’s checking the quality of the tomatoes to get closer to Wendy. But Wendy is taking her time in the cheese aisle. She tastes some Swiss and French cheeses but ends up grabbing the same herb Gouda she’s used to. She’s also in the mood for some hummus (she learned how to prepare it from her Lebanese ex-boyfriend), which she likes to dip fresh carrots in, so she grabs some and of course picks up tahini, canned chickpeas, two lemons, and garlic powder, telling herself it won’t make her breath nearly as bad as fresh garlic; she’s a lady. She still has a little olive oil left in her studio. She got it on her trip to Šibenik last summer. Jared finds her too slow in her movement and choices and, out of mild frustration, decides to leave the market. He then quickly enters a bookshop and buys two books on a whim he’s never going to read but will love to bring on his travels: The Soul of the World by Scruton and Figuring by Maria Popova. He checks the time and realizes he has to rush: he’s late for his therapy session.