Contentment comes while walking towards sushi

At 5:15 pm this afternoon I was wrapping up my day, closing applications and straightening my desk for the morning, when I took one more glance at my personal email. My friend Cindy had emailed me saying, “What are you doing for dinner? Sushi?????? :).” With no set plans for the evening, snatched up the phone to give her a shout and set a time to meet at Kami Sushi.

I walked out of my office building and into the freakishly warm night, plugged into the shuffling pod, unnecessary coat slung across my bag, feeling jaunty (what a good, expressive word. It doesn’t get used nearly enough), happy and looking forward to dinner. As I walked east down Market Street, I felt the loneliness and dissatisfaction of the weekend drain away. It was replaced by a feeling of hope, excitement for the future and generalized bliss at being alive in this place, at this time and in this life. I’ve felt this way before and I know that it doesn’t last, at least at that level of strength and intensity, but I’m always grateful for the moments when I feel it, because it allows me to reset myself, find my default settings of contentment.

I’ve been feeling change coming for sometime, although those feelings has receded into the background a little as life in Philly has gotten more interesting and engrossing again. But it’s still back there, in the back of mind, an itch I can’t quite reach and it grows more irritating when I think about it. Unfortunately it doesn’t get any better when I scratch it either. Over the sushi (yellowtail/scallion and eel/avocado rolls) Cindy asked me what my plan was and I had to confess that I have no plan. I’m just going to hang with the uncertainty for a little while longer (I’m giving myself an April 1st reevaluation deadline) and try to enjoy those little moments of unsolicited, unexpected joy.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 28th, 2005 at 9:29 pm and is filed under Friends, Inner Itches. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.