"What, exactly, do I want…?!"
Lucy asked herself, even as she enjoyed her croissant.
*Oh yummm.* As she took in the tip, the delicate layered pastry was at first outwardly hard, but then the inside was soft, yielding, and… moist, and positively *melted*, filling her mouth with a hot treacly *spilling*, a delightfully sweet-yet-savory, fluffy and buttery blessing, thereby allowing Author to simultaneously give Lucy and certain cultured members of the audience a nice treat, after all the lack of dopamine that Valentine had yet to provide, if indeed he ever would… 🙄✨🫢
The whiteboard - a mindmap in progress - was currently blank, aside from this question, which as always, was written in Lucy's beautiful, elegant and clear handwriting, and, in keeping with the unwritten rule of mindmaps, outlined in a nice fluffy little cloud.
"S-Sorry, what was that?" A number of the 'discerning' audience members had lost track of what the question was meant to be, distracted by all of the fluff(y stuffs), whilst others rolled their eyes.
"What do I… actually want?"
Lucy knew the answers she was meant to say. Be Happy. Healthy. Safety. Security. Romance. Positive feelings. Positive experiences. Happy Family. Loving relationships.
Okay, great. She thought aloud, even as she added to her "What do I want?" Mind Map Cloud.
But… what did all that actually look like?
This was where things became harder to describe. Aside from the things she had been prescribed… since she was young, to believe… the things she had spent her life so far to achieve.
To be honest, things were good.
Money. Health. Wealth. She had everything that she should, in theory, require, in order to successfully retire…
But that was the thing. What was she working so hard towards? Was she saving for the right rewards?
After her decision to actively pursue, what it was that she herself wanted to do, Lucy had come to a realisation - a feeling of a strange sensation!
The reason why she admired Valentine so dearly - was because he was living life so *clearly*…
He had a mission. A worthwhile cause. Something worth doing, and sacrificing towards…
Decisively, she wrote the word, that she had in the past so often heard, but which now seemed to her to finally make sense - beyond all the dollars and the cents…
"Meaning."
Lucy breathes, a quiet exhale, as the sheer weight of it impacts at scale.
When it came down to it, she, like many people, wanted to be happy, to feel like her life was wonderful, but even beyond that, she realised that she wanted her life to be meaningful too - she asked her heart, and she found it true.
All of a sudden, there was something to do!
But even as the mindmap expanded out and began to swell, there was still a lot more to find out as well.
Where exactly did meaning lie? Was it in the living itself, or the reason why?
*Lucy stretches after the day's rigour, showing off her lovely figure*
Ehh… Honestly, that was probably enough for today… Lucy felt. Regardless of the exact way, I still would like it to be fun, she thought, as she went out to get some sun, and bought… some more things that she saw on sale…
Retail therapy never failed…!!! 🫢✨