I left my corporate life several days ago. Now, every morning when I wake up, my mind is already busy playing with my emotions: joy, sadness, happiness, anger all mashed up in one piece. And it is usually 5:00am, a sign that my body is jumping up and down like a little kid. Both my mind and my body are embracing everything in this world, bursting with energy in every direction.

It is not all joy, though. Along with the tired but true happiness and calmness, there are also sadness and anxiety, as if those emotions are secretly making a pact and dancing hand in hand under the table without my agreement. When I was employed, I never truly felt those sensations, or had time to play with them. I quickly killed them off (why stay at the same place dealing with my emotions? We got to move forward!) and rushed up into my cubicle.

And then I usually spent the next 9 hours inside the “solitary cell,” wondering where all my passions and energy were gone, and blaming everything for that: work, pressure, obligations, peers, anything except myself. I seriously, completely, totally forgot that it was ME who killed off all my internal worlds earlier that day (and during the day too). And the evening comes and I gobble up a few drinks and then go to bed, hoping that tomorrow would be a different day.

As I quietly sit down and stay with my emotions, I start to realize the true reason why I chose to run away from myself and bury my heads into distractions under the name of work every day. It was because I could not deal staying with myself, even for 30 minutes. I just could not handle myself. I did not what to do with those roaring internal sensations that come around when I sit down and try to meditate, pulling me into all directions instead of giving me blissful joy as written in bestselling self-help books. It was me who sought distractions, and there was a big distraction that not only occupied my mind but also paid the bills. I jumped and took it. I devoured it, and even admired it. When bad times came (they always do), my work even provided myself with a nice scapegoat, where I could continuously blaming the inhuman structure, the Big Brother, the “system.”

But here I am, back to square one. And I am meeting my long lost friends, my emotions, who still do not know how to behave well or even please me. They just keep running around in my inner playground and I even need to be their parents, carefully observing and making sure they do not start to harm each other. Unfair, I say to myself. But I also know that at the end of the day, when I am all dead tired and just do not know if all this is worth it, some of them will sneak up on my back and spray that magic powder when I am just about to give up and close my eyes.

And there, my friends, I see the beauty of sunset, feel the fragile brightness glowing out of my dear people, appreciate the little kindness we give each other, and even the ultimate warmth of the cold evening.