LVI. There is Such a Thing as 'Guilty Pleasures' -

Watching the Kardashians, I have come to accept, is no doubt a guilty pleasure.

Deliberately leaving a cookie’s worth of cookie batter left in the bowl, rather than on a pan slid into the oven, just so I can consume the creamy texture of the uncooked baked good, is also a guilty pleasure.

Deciding to go out with the family to eat at a place that is across the street from one of my favorite dessert shops, subconsciously knowing and almost expecting that half-pound of ladoos will inevitably be bought and eaten solely by myself, is yet another guilty pleasure.

We all have them.

We all have ‘guilty pleasures’.

Truth is, in the above scenarios the guilt never lived up to, well, the defined feeling and sensation that 'guilt’ provokes - adrenaline, blushing, butterflies, etc.

In the above scenarios, the guilt I feel is in passing and I successfully ignore the guilt, instead exploiting the pleasing aspect that is left in guilt’s wake .

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I detest staring.

I hate the ogling of those land-mowing pigs.

I cannot stand unnecessary eye contact by anonymous people, children included.

However there is a type of staring that does not bother me.

It is a quaint type of staring and is another guilty pleasure to add to my repertoire.

In no way is this staring lascivious.

No, this staring is so pure and is permeated with what I can only describe as kindness. I am so pleased that kindness still exists.

I feel safe under this gaze and I cannot meet it after the initial acknowledgement.

What a moment, this completely fleeting moment is, and yet this moment sets the tone for my day-dreaming for the next half a day or so.

Replaying moments like these causes me to be guarded. When I say “guarded” I mean to say that I regulate where I think about these moments.

So for example, one of the times I block out remnants of a gaze that gave way to a moment in time, (my guilty pleasure), is when I exercise. I had tried to think about such moments multiple times, believing that it would act as a focal point in my work-out.

Wow was I wrong - trial-and-error reaped a significant finding: when I was running on the treadmill, my legs would suddenly give out, and when I was moving to cardio salsa steps, my hips would move independently from the music, instead swaying in slow motion before I would snap back to reality out of dancing competitiveness, stupidly determined in my pursuit to prove myself a better dancer than the others in my class that functioned as a work-out rather than a dance workshop.

In short, replaying these moments succeeded in turning my legs into jelly rather than stabilizing my body or focusing my mind on working out.

It is sort of tragic at first, how the gaze is thought to be unrequited.

But then, it is so sweet, when the brief interception of the gaze occurs, followed by downcast eyes and subdued smiles.

Bittersweet - that is  precisely the sensation that defines this guilty pleasure.

This conclusion has arrived in a timely fashion, for there are only some hours left for me to replay such a moment before it becomes forgotten in the midst of daily tasks, new experiences, and living life, witnessing kindness, and experiencing more beautiful moments -