Reflections on Living the Agora

I was preparing my breakfast, grinding some grains with the electric grinder - a dear gift I won from my sisters - as the water warmed in the kettle. I chose one of my favorite cups, a very special friends gift, and let the coffee filter straight to the thermal bottle I bought at times when I was two graduations and spent the day away from home. At that time, I used to carry hot tea to face the cold days of Porto Alegre on the bus.

While accompanied this ritual, I realized how each object carried a memory: different moments of my life, all present there, somehow. It was at this moment that I came across the now. With myself, in the present. How is my life right now? How am I in my life now?

I'm 33 years old, I'm a woman, I live alone and I'm single. These characteristics soon arose in my mind. I was reflecting a few minutes about them - and that's where the desire to write this text came about.

By sharing this moment of life with others, I realize the curiosity that wakes up. They often ask me about living alone or not being in a relationship. And along with that, I notice expectations that were not created by me, but cross my daily life, especially because it is a woman. There is a kind of invisible script that still circulates in speech and behaviors: dating, marrying, having children and following life in this format. When we do not follow this order, it seems that we need to justify in detail, as if the question does not say were: "Okay, but why did your life come in this place?"

In the male universe, not being in a relationship is often associated with freedom and even a certain social prestige. For women, it often carries a stigma: as if there was something incomplete. In meetings with family or friends, there are often questions about boyfriends, children, social comparisons or problems of being living in this way. Even the admiration for the autonomy of living alone, almost always, is accompanied by a look of "How long?". As if independence were valid but provisional.

And this idea, so rooted in the micro-relations of daily life and in the widely publicized discourses, causes me discomfort. What holds this look that sees a moment of life like just a 'between', a transitional period? I get the impression of a social interpretation that 'important things' - date, marry, have children - are not happening; And so this would be considered just a break, until the forecast is made: make the most socially validated choices.

Living alone and being single, for me, has been a time of life. A lifetime. It is exercise of autonomy, choosing your own routine, being responsible for so many choices, learning to hear the silence of the house (which I love so much) and also to welcome discomfort when they appear.

Thus, it is in this space that acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) makes sense: practicing opening and living the present moment with intention. At times, thoughts of comparison or judgment may arise, as well as uncomfortable sensations, whose purpose we do not understand immediately. Consciously, we can look at it and choose how to relate to so many crossings - in the form of questions, interactions, nonverbal expressions, media ideas or Instagram images and videos. It is a commitment that needs to be made and constantly redone, with whom we are and the way we are.

Accepting uncomfortable emotions is part of life. We cannot control what we feel or what they expect from us. And yet, we can choose to live according to what really matters.

In life, there are no transitions. 

Life is presence. 

And so, how is yours now? 

Paula Domeneghini