There will be more croissants

Do you remember that scene in Miss Congeniality where Cheryl (Miss Rhode Island) is asked: “describe your perfect date”, and answers with “I’d have to say April 25th, because it’s not too hot, not too cold - all you need is a light jacket!”

Turns out, she was dead right. I woke up on Saturday, April 25th, with the glow of sunlight behind my bedroom curtain. I opened the window and felt the cool air coming through. I often joke that I thrive in weather that’s exactly between 16 - 20 degrees celsius, anything above or below and I’m just not my best self. Well, this was it. My perfect environment to thrive. My time to shine. Look out world, here I come!

I got ready, packed a small bag with a journal and book I had no intention of reading, my best spring-time outfit, and I set off into the city. I had arranged a viewing for a new apartment that morning and planned to get coffee on the way and have a little main character moment. As usual, time progressed without my knowledge or permission and I found myself running a bit late, so I went straight to the apartment viewing. It was a nice place, in one of my favourite neighbourhoods in town. I looked around trying to envision a life living here, the space was a little bigger and I thought about the gatherings I could host in the living room, the couch that friends could come and sit on and talk about their life, the kitchen where we could hang out and cook food (that part is highly theoretical seeing as I can barely make toast successfully).

Afterwards, I headed to the nearby coffee shop, picked up a pastry and a filter coffee, and found a place on the side of a grassy hill to sit and watch the world go by. I guess everyone else had the same idea and I watched friends have picnics, couples walking along the waterside, dog walkers out and about, people like me sat reading or just taking a moment in the morning. I sat under the dappled sunlight of a tree and felt the vitamin D flowing through my entire being, a wave of serotonin rushing over me.

It had been a long, dark winter. As a deep feeler of ✨ feelings ✨, the seasonal depression hits pretty strong and somehow catches me off guard every year. This was the first day I had left without a big coat or jacket on for the past 4 or 5 months. I made it through - I thought to myself. I felt so grateful just to be here, to be alive. Eating the croissant from my paper bag just about sent me into the stratosphere of uncontainable joy. Good bread can do that, I think.

And then, slowly, it was as if I had gone so far around the circle of happiness that it started to loop back into a melancholy feeling. I had done too much feeling, alas.

My ‘perfect date’ had become slightly existential. I watched people pass by and realised that I will never really know these people. Some of them looked so cool and I wanted to be their friend but I realised, I probably won’t be, in fact, I may never see them again. I thought about how the summer months might get a little too warm and I won’t want to be outside as much. I was recognising the beauty of the day and this moment but also this acute awareness that it was passing. What if this is a day I look back on one day as ‘perfect’ and yet I’m not fully grasping it now?

I searched for a word in English to describe it. Bittersweet perhaps? Kacey Musgraves put it well in her song “Happy and Sad”…

I’m the kind of person
Who starts getting kinda nervous
When I’m having the time of my life

Is there a word for the way that I’m feeling tonight?
Happy and sad at the same time
You got me smilin’ with tears in my eyes
I never felt so high
No, I’ve never been this far off of the ground
And they say everything that goes up must come down
But I don’t wanna come down.

Same, gurl.

Of course the Japanese have a phrase for it: mono no aware (“the bittersweet poignancy of things”). A deep appreciation of impermanence, recognising that beauty is heightened because it is fleeting. A gentle sadness because of the transience, but a joy in witnessing it.

German has a word too, sehnsucht - intense longing, yearning, or craving, combined with a bittersweet, sometimes painful, desire for something unattainable or distant. It encapsulates a deep, emotional longing for alternate realities, a "home" that may not exist, or a yearning for the past or future.

It’s something like the combination of those things that I felt. There’s a quote from C.S. Lewis that always stuck with me

“At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.” - C.S. Lewis (The Weight of Glory)

I think that’s a strange and familiar longing for me. My sensitvity and empathy are my superpowers as an artist, I feel things deeply and it enables me to translate those feelings into words and music. But, sometimes I find it a little overwhelming. Moments of beauty become this acute awareness for me that there’s a level of beauty we can only observe but not be united with - we cannot enter beyond the veil into the beauty itself, at least not until eternity when we may finally experience perfect union with the author and creator of all things beautiful. My mind lingers there and my emotions are pulled once again into this distant daydream of longing and desire, but in reality, it’s just that the sun came out and I ate a croissant. Sometimes I wish I could just enjoy a moment for what it is.

I wonder if part of it comes from this weird mindset that good things may not come my way. Enjoying something is mixed with this feeling that I may not enjoy it again. I might only look back on these days as good, but not be able to enjoy good days in the future. Sometimes I just have to call out the lie when I feel that way. There will be more times like this.

I saw a girl on TikTok say that a professor told her that life’s meaning is “to enjoy the passage of time”. I’ve been thinking about it all week. I think there’s more to life than that, but I do think that approach to life is a good one. What if my croissant-induced melancholy could simply be a moment of enjoying something good while it is still happening? What if I could hold every moment with a looser grip rather than feeling like I need to grab it with both hands and squeeze it dry? Sometimes a moment is so good you want to freeze it, you want to somehow stop the clock and savour it. But the ‘mono no aware’ of it, is that the fact that it is passing is part of what makes it beautiful. Rather than grieve it’s impermanence, maybe we can learn to enjoy it as it happens and passes.

Maybe that’s the reason a photo never seems to be as good as the real thing. Often my first instinct is to get the picture, post the story. But, the moment frozen in time is never quite as meaningful as enjoying the moment while it is happening. I don’t ever feel like I’ve truly savoured the moment until I just sit with it, match it’s pace and watch it go by.

At this point, you may be considering me something of an over-thinker, and you would indeed be correct. I know several of my friends would have a look of bewilderment and tell me to just eat the pastry and carry on with my day. But I’m writing for the other sensitive souls and deep feelers out there. Sometimes, a simple moment can spiral into a kind of melancholy rumination that kinda throws off my whole day, and so I’m learning recognise that before it happens, because let’s face it, not everything is that deep!

So, next time I find myself eating a particularly good croissant in the sun, maybe I’ll try and enjoy it more than I mourn it.

Maybe a relevant song from my latest album:
Even when it feels like a bitter end, I know there’ll be a brighter day.