Dear Life..

Dear Life,

I have borrowed you for 24 years now. You have always been there even though I may not have always seen you. You are the reason I have risen each morning, the reason I have fallen asleep each day without fear of not waking up the next. Yes, you are the very reason I breathe.

You have not always been good to me. You have brought me pain and grief and in leaving others you have brought me loss. You have brought me challenges greater than I could ever have imagined or feared. You have made me doubt myself and often my fear has been greater than my faith. Together we have perhaps done things we are not proud of, or that, with hindsight, we see were foolish. You must have seen similar mistakes in others many times before, Life, but you remained passive, allowing me to experience it all for myself for better or worse. Sometimes I want to thank you for the experiences, for who they have allowed me to become but other times I look upon you with such sadness and regret that I cannot feel you here anymore.

I feel that I have allowed circumstances to silence you. I have ignored you. You have been here but you have been asleep and I have not made an effort to wake you. I have seen only the clouds even when the sun was just out of sight. I have focused on the darkness and in doing so have failed to see your light. I have forgotten that you are only borrowed and that each second I have with you is precious.

Forgive me, Life 

Forgive me for not seeing you, truly seeing you. Forgive me for not taking a moment every day to breathe you in. Forgive me for almost begrudging you for being here whilst at the same time not wanting you to go. Forgive me for not loving every second, every inch, every scent of you. Without you, I would not have experienced much pain but equally I would not have experienced much joy. Forgive me for not accepting that each emotion, good and bad, is evidence that you are here and reside within me. Forgive me for forgetting that you are here and for forgetting that I am alive.

I am alive.

So, please Life, accept my apology. Awaken from your slumber. Give me strength on the days I have none. I can not promise you that I will never wish things were different or that things had gone better or been done differently. But I can promise that I will actively try to fill myself from the top of my head to the tips of my toes with you. I will find things for us to do that make me happy, even just the small things. I will thank you often, for deciding to stay with me another day and I will not take you for granted. I will remember just how beautiful you are and how temporary. I will love you, warts and all, so that on the day, hopefully many years from now, when you decide you are going to leave me, we will part as old friends and I will gracefully let you go knowing that I loved you as much as I could.

But for now life, lets LIVE.
xxxx

24 things I have learnt in 24 years...

First of all, I cannot believe that I am 24. It seems only yesterday that I was getting ready in my room at my parents house to celebrate becoming 18. I have now not been 18 for 6 years! As my sister would say... 'Good Lord!'

 Each year I find my birthday to be a mixture of both celebration and nostalgia. Celebration for the life that I have - the fact I am growing older is because I am alive, a privilege denied to many. Yet nostalgia about the time that has passed, opportunities I may have missed, friends I may no longer see or talk to and time that can never be unspent.

Time is a very bizarre thing. It passes by and we measure it in the way man has designed through clocks and hours and minutes and seconds. Just as we would find it near impossible to describe colour to somebody born blind, how would we describe time to somebody who did not understand the words we have created to describe it?

'An hour is a passing of 60 mintues'
'But what is an hour? What is a minute?'

'A minute is a passing of 60 seconds'
'But what is a second, how does it feel?'

I think we all get the picture. What I am trying to say is, time doesn't really mean anything. It isn't tangible, yet we know that it exists because we see it in the wrinkles on the faces of the elderly and the lack of it on the smooth, plump cheeks of the young. We see it in the rising and setting of the sun each day. Time is not merciful, it does not spare any of us in its path. Yet it does bring with it some treasures -beautiful memories, healing and experience.

Perhaps the greatest gift of time is the lessons that it teaches us and here are 24 things I have learnt in the past 24 years...

1. When you have a gut feeling, it will not go away if you ignore it. Quite the opposite in fact, it will grow and grow and ache and ache until eventually you have no choice but to obey.

2. Sometimes you lose contact with people who you thought would be in your life forever. Accepting this is difficult but acceptance is also the only way to move on. It hurts though.

3. Family, in most instances (although I appreciate there are exceptions for some) will be the ones who are there for you after everybody else has given up on you, forsaken you and forgotten you. Blood is thicker than water.

4. Related to number 3, nobody will ever love you the way your mother does.

5. There will always be someone prettier than you, richer than you, smarter than you, better at life than you. It sucks but resistance is futile! Slagging someone off who has more money than you wont make you any richer. As humans we naturally try to make inferior that which we perceive to be superior to protect our self esteem. But lets be cautious about this.

6. You can never know what someone else is going through. Or rather, you can never assume to know. Sometimes we think the grass is greener but that's because we have no idea what the reality of a situation entails behind those closed doors. This is why we should be kind to people, they may be suffering.

7. People will judge you and talk about you no matter what you do. Unfortunately, it is one of the sad facts of life. However, this is also somewhat freeing...if you are going to be talked about regardless, you may as well do what you truly want to do.

8. You will miss out on something. We are so privileged to have so many opportunities that it is pretty much inevitable that we will not be able to do every single thing that we want to do in life. In an ideal world we would but in most people's realities we cannot. That's not to say we can't do what is most important to us but rather to acknowledge that we have neither the time nor the resources to fulfil every single wish we can wish.

9. True friends stick around when the going gets rough. They will not desert you just because you are no fun to be around at a particular time. They will love you for who they know you to be and they will try and help you back to that person if you should lose your way. If a friend makes you feel bad about yourself, they really shouldn't be a friend. You deserve better.

10. Spontaneous nights out or other spontaneous events are often the best ones! Be flexible.

11. If you want something bad enough you will sacrifice sleep, fun, comfort etc. to achieve it. If you are not prepared to do this, perhaps you don't want it as much as you think you do.

12. A cup of tea can ease the pain of any problem. I truly believe in this. When the going gets tough....put the kettle on!

13. Laughing at a problem can suddenly make it seem so much smaller. I cannot stress how true this is! Laugh, laugh and laugh some more if you can. Perhaps whilst drinking that tea?

14. All of us, far too often, believe what we read or see on the television, news, Facebook without even considering whether or not it is true. We choose to read things that reinforce our own views and we allow ourselves to form further/deeper opinions based on misleading information and unintelligent arguments. Lets ask more questions before we make those judgements.

15. Nature can offer a sense of comfort that you cannot get from anything else. Go out and spend time in it. You may be lying in bed watching tv and can't be bothered to get dressed and go out for that walk. Go. You will get far more from the sky and the air than you will get from the television.

16. You cannot change the past. This one is difficult for me. There are several things I would like to do differently if I were given the chance. But that's just it. I will never be given that chance because the past is in the past. We can do nothing about our past except to learn the lessons it was there to teach us and to apply them productively in the present and the future. I remember as a child of about 11-12 watching Romeo and Juliet (Baz Lurhmann's version) for a second and third time praying that Romeo would get the note and wouldn't take the poison. But the film was filmed, the ending was never going to change and revisiting it for such a purpose was futile. Going back to your past over and over again is similar...Romeo will always drink the poison. Acceptance is the only way forward.

17. First impressions are not always correct. We all meet people and make immediate judgements about them. Its natural and in evolutionary times actually served an important purpose in our survival. However, we are no longer living in caves hunting and grunting! We have intelligent minds capable of reason and development. I have been guilty of making assumptions about people before that are less than favourable only to go on to get to know them and to realise that they are lovely and that I really like and respect them. I try to remember this now with each new person I encounter.

18. We are responsible for our own happiness. When we have big life decisions and problems to make and solve we often look to other people for a solution because we don't have faith in our own ability to face up to it. We want someone to come rushing in on a white horse to rescue us, to say all the right things and to take away all the painful things we need to face up to. This will never happen. We are the only people who can make changes in our lives for the better. This is really scary. It doesn't make it any less true however.

19. Being silly, childish and just having some good old fashioned, clean fun is very soothing for the soul. Stop worrying about being 'an adult' or how old you are. Have fun! My Mum is 52 this year (sorry, Mum!) and just the other week she was space-hopping it around the living room with my niece! Good times, people, good times!!

My Mum...forever young and playful (and my Dad, laughing in the background)

20. Life plans will probably not work out. You know that 'life plan' you had when you were younger, the one in your mind where you make a contract with yourself about what you will do at what age? Yeah, that probably wont happen. Sometimes it sucks. Sometimes something better happens. Let the plans go and just accept what is.

21. Friends and family are the only things that really, truly matter. We do get caught up in jobs and money and day to day activities but the bottom line is that family and friends are really the only important thing. We need to remind ourselves of this and cherish each person whilst they are here.

22. When you are at rock bottom and you are absolutely sure that you can endure no more, something inside you will make you carry on. This is the beauty of the human spirit. It can endure so much and yet at some level remain hopeful and optimistic.

23. Music can take you through any experience in your life. It can lift you up or it can sit with you when you are down. The fact that little children dance to music without being taught to tells me that the need to dance and to listen to music is innate. Keep your heart in the dance.

24. Life is beautiful...even when I feel rubbish I know this deep down. Life is a gift, we are privileged to be here.

So here are my 24 things. I have learnt much more but these are some of the ones I feel are most important. What have you learnt? Take a moment to think about it because the lessons you have learnt may support you now, here in the present.

Much love x x x x