inwardsun.outwardsmile

Yesterday, my room mate Maria, having just come back from a 2 weeks vacation in Chile, asked me a question through the thin wall that separate our rooms:

So, are you doing anything special tomorrow, since it’s your day off?

I laughed. Like what?! I was sick with a flu and there was a blizzard outside.

She laughed too. Yeah, what a silly question.

Here, now, what could possibly be special…?

…well Today…

I woke up around 9 a.m. having slept more than 11 hours. I had spent the entire day in bed yesterday but today, I felt much better.

There was new, white snow on the ground and on the roof tops. A few days ago people were wearing sunglasses and sneakers. March is always a month of waiting.

I checked my e-mails.

I great friend had sent me a sunshine note with a link to Brett Dennen’s song “Sydney, I’ll Come Running”. I listened to Brett Dennen on Spotify all throughout the morning and imagined I was some place warm.

There was also an e-mail from my mother thanking me for the bouquet of flowers that had been delivered to her door. I had sent them to celebrate the occasion of International Women’s Day and because 10% of the profit went to a Red Cross project to help children find their mothers. Also, I wanted to cheer her up and let her know how excited I am about our trip to Sardinia this summer.

I did some research on the place in Sardinia where we’ll be staying.

I called the Swedish embassy in Oslo to renew my passport.

I also considered signing up for life coaching Mike Dooley’s inspirational trip around the rest of Italy.

I talked to one of my best friends Moa on Skype for about an hour. She was sick with something as uncommon as shingles but happy about a trip she’s making with her boyfriend to Iceland for Easter + possibly India for field studies in July and most likely South Africa in December where we planned to meet up.

I spoke to at least 4 other friends online, including colleagues that I see almost every day.

My room mate Charlotte came home from her boyfriends for the first time in weeks and we shared some bread and grapes in the kitchen. She told me she and some friends were going to a ski resort up North for Easter and asked if I wanted to join and I thought, why not?

And I booked a ridiculously cheap hotel room at employee rate.

I took a slow walk through the slippery wet snow to the cozy Chillout Travel Centre Café.

Flipped through travel magazines and Lonely Planet Guides for almost two hours. I don’t know if it was the strong coffee, reading about trips across the seas and continents or the fact that I hadn’t really recovered from the flu but when I got up I felt dizzy and had to get out for fresh air.

The snow had almost melted away and it was beginning to get dark.

Back home, in front of the computer again, I learnt that there is cruel army leader in Uganda named Joseph Kony and that there is a non-profit organization called Invisible Children that wants to stop him. I felt my room shrink a little and my heart thump harder when I watched the video clip that 27 million other people had watched that day already. I wrote to my friend Malin on Facebook although she lives just 20 minutes away from my house and we both agreed we should do something. But paint the city red with posters? No, we couldn’t get our head around this whole thing.

She told me “on an easier note” that she was going to Ireland for the weekend. I told her I was going to Gothenburg the next weekend. She said she had all her weekends planned up until June and we joked about how we had actually become weekend planning people.

But in June I’ve got a whole week to “just be”, she wrote

Well, it’s great that you got that planned, I replied and added a smiley.

We live on the Internet these days. We get our information online. We are moved by pictures of poverty and war but we don’t know how it relate to us. We plan trips around the world but we don’t take the time to visit a neighbor. We try to make time to breathe or sign up for courses to find ourselves. We don’t know what it means when someone asks you if you’re doing anything special.

What is special?

I guess it wasn’t such a silly question after all.

I did an imaginary trip around the World today only to end up at my own door step.

A little tired, a little more confused but ultimately, safe and sound.

I guess just being alive is pretty special.