The other morning despite getting up when the town sounded fast asleep and the stars were just disappearing while the sky remained black and the street lights shone orange beams on to the pavement… I still find myself two hours later rushing around to get out of the door so that I could get to work on time. Mascara was to blame.
I have a pink and orange floral box on my 70s wooden retro dressing table, it has some make up and bits inside. The main function of the contents is to assist the morning transformation from porcupine like hair to smooth shiny locks and magic a face of sleep lines and still tired eyes to one where creams and colour erase a miraculous fifteen years from my birth year. That’s the hope anyway.
At the end of this ten-minute routine (cheeky…. it doesn’t take *that * long) I searched for the item needed to finalise the job, my new black mascara which also promises to make my lashes thicker by a zillion times with the also subtle promise that with one sweep of black liquid I’d walk out the door looking and feeling like Kate Moss.
I couldn’t find it and I convinced myself it was lost so despite the small size of the floral orange and pink box and despite rustling through it more than ten times which now also made me ten minutes late… I couldn’t find it.
I began therefore to open drawers and start scattering head bands and paracetamol and used face wipes and odd socks but I still could’t find the mascara that was going to change me from scarecrow to supermodel. I empty another drawer finding a Bluetooth speaker and another European plug adapter. Why do those disappear right about the time you set off on your next foreign holiday and then magically reappear as soon as you’ve bought a new one?! I digress.
With my bedroom now looking like it should belong on ‘storage wars’ I go back to the box for one more look. I know it’s there. I need to calm myself down, move away from mascara gate and take it slower. I need to stop looking so hard. I look again as my mobile phone glares at me… telling me I have a few minutes left before I need to leave. Behind the tinted moisturiser I spot plump mascara noir sitting alone and I grab it, thankfully. My naked eyes are saved.
As usual it’s often a small moment from my week that leads me to other random thoughts and in this case specifically how sometimes we can search so hard for something, we miss what’s right in front of us.
How many of us search for the perfect house, job, experiences , wealth, friends, holidays, love, evening, weekend, look…. when just like the mascara it’s more likely a lot of those things are right in front of us should we take a bit more notice. Our landscape, the sea and the trees not yet explored , friends not yet met, overlooked items bought but forgotten, a home undiscovered, unfound friendship, love.. right in front of your eyes.
I suppose it was a strange reminder as I searched for the mascara that all of us probably spend an infinite time looking for something we think that’ll make our life better when if we looked around us a bit closer. It might just be right there.
Happy Sunday x
Dear Ms. 