Can dreamers ever be happy? I'm starting to question the very core of who I am. One would say I'm in the midst of an existential crisis. No, crisis is too big of a word. Let's say "existential development". Does that work? Can I use those 2 words together in a coherent way? I'm going with yes.
So can a dreamer every find happiness. That is the question. I don't mean any kind of happiness, I'm more referring to a general, deep-down happiness. The happiness that comes from a soul at peace.
I know that I'm a dreamer. Numerous different people have labeled me this on many different occasions. And now I'm starting to feel like I'm constantly chasing after something that I'll never be able to catch. For example, when I was a teenager walking home from school, I would close my eyes and imagine I was walking on the streets of Paris. Then I would be happy. No problems that I had in Texas could follow me to Paris, oh no. But then in Paris, I would dream about being in London, close to my sister. And then in London, I would dream about being in Brussels, with my boyfriend. Then in Brussels, I would dream about being anywhere else where I could get a good paying job. Now I'm in Cairo searching for that good paying job, and I'm dreaming of being back in Europe, where life is so much easier on so many levels.
Or how I come up with new ideas practically each week; dreams of starting NGOs, or restaurants, or interior design firms... Fires that burn just as bright as they fizzle fast.
I'm getting tired of searching for that one thing, that one dream, that will make me at peace. I need to be in the present moment.
Easier said than done.
Well in the spirit of being in the present moment, I'm going to start focusing in on that which is around me and makes me happy on a day-to-day basis.
Starting with sweet potatoes.
Here in Egypt there are a lot of street vendors, of all varieties. You can hear them yelling advertisements as they walk through the streets, hawking whatever they are selling. My favorite is the "batata" guy. Batata is potato in Arabic, but seems to refer to sweet potato in this context. (I definitely should ask my boyfriend for clarification on this subject). The sweet potatoes are roasted in a little makeshift wood burning oven, place on a small wooden cart (how the whole this doesn't burn, I don't know) and they taste delicious! Smokey and moist, these sweet potatoes actually converted me. I never liked sweet potatoes until I tried these. It's probably not the most sanitary thing I've ever eaten though. My guess is that the potatoes aren't properly washed, the oven is most likely in a horrendous state, they are wrapped in either pages from a magazine or newspaper (once I got one that was wrapped in someone's cell phone bill), but luckily, the potato comes in its own wrapping, the skin. So if you only eat the flesh of the sweet potato and not the skin, you should be fine. And I highly recommend this to anyone who likes sweet potatoes.
I tried recreating the potato at home, slow cooking it at a low temperature, and although it was good, it didn't quite have the same delicious smokey flavor to it.
So, whether I'm dreaming of the greener grass, or living in the present moment, I'll be keeping my eye out for my beloved "Batata".
*The photos are not mine, I found them on Google Images.
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