Life and family are the two most precious things ever. Without life there would be no family and without family, life would be so different. When I say family I mean the category without limits – blood relatives, relatives by marriage, your friends, your pets, the people you feel add a little spark to every day by just being present. Even though everyone is aware of how precious life is, we still do not treat it as the rare and fragile jewel that it is.
Today, we are all guilty of prioritising the average things in life. We chase mediocre relationships and the people who do not cherish us. Everyone these days is afraid to live life to the full, they hold back their feelings, remain quiet, fear love and are too proud to welcome forgiveness. I honestly think pride is one of the biggest killers today. Everyone lives by playing mind games and believing if people truly care about you they would know how you feel about them. The reality is, when you’re leaving Earth for something greater, will you be worrying about what others think of you? Will you be holding back from letting someone know how you feel about them? Will your ego be the strongest feeling that is shining through? Very few people dance through life because so many of us are stumbling. We all stand on a beach and stare at the horizon, various problems running through our minds and somehow think these problems are important in the grand scheme of things, as if those waves, rocks, shells and fish are going to be so phased by the gathering you weren’t invited to, a bill you have yet to pay, the coffee you spilled on your new skirt or the man who broke your heart.
People settle into fake friendships and are willing to accept being left out and walked all over simply because they feel like they don’t have anyone else, as if out of the 7 billion people there are only two you can hang out with. None of us want to tell the person we love how much we love them, the ink that shaped and formed romantic poetry and love songs is running and blurred as we forget to speak from our hearts fully incase we are “too clingy” or face rejection.
We let the people we love to pieces slip away, out of our grips without knowing how much we love them because of minor arguments and disagreements we have had along the way. We hold onto grudges much tighter than we hold onto forgiveness and then complain when we get rope burn. We pour all of our appreciation into a like button on a social network and images that will one day be nothing more but memories lost in cyber space. We analyse peoples lives by the way we see it through a screen and try to fix broken relationships that way instead of knocking on their door and enveloping them in a hug.
We feel forced into life paths we don’t want and end up unhappy and unmotivated because we let somebody else’s journey influence our own even though they won’t always be there to brave the journey with us. People roll their eyes at people with different ideas, styles and choices as if life came with a rule book that guides us towards a future that has been set out by another person. People hold back from laughing, dancing and loving because of what other people will think… but who cares what people think? Where is the value in your life if you don’t squeeze every drop out of it everyday? We could all leave here tomorrow or in a hundred years time so that uncertainty should be constantly lighting up our spirits.
We are all a simple dot in the universe, a mere blip in the millions of years and millions of people who have come and gone before us and those who will come and go after us, leaving layers of different footprints on lands and hearts while the waves just keep crashing and the wind keeps blowing, free of prejudice and free of hate. However, during your time here you will realise that not everybody has the same heart as you, the world is full of clashing personalities. Many of these personalities are wonderful, influential people, but unfortunately, some people lack sincere, overwhelming love in their hearts, they lack compassion and they often try to make other people’s lives lack these things too. Hate and bitterness is contagious, but only if we allow it to be.
Every person you love is a part of you, every soft spot takes up some part of your heart, much more than bitterness ever will. If you love someone, tell them. If you miss someone, tell them. If you love someone but you’re angry at them, tell them so you can forgive them. If they don’t love you or don’t want forgiveness, let it go, your conscience can’t be burdened by someone else’s pride and bitterness. If you weren’t supposed to form relationships or feel things, no one else would be here with you, yet every single day we are passing hundreds of souls that have all been through different things. Everyone is fighting their own battle and it is up to you to be the main warrior in yours.
As my mum always says – We are all just passing through. People will come and people will go, there will be stormy weather out at sea and there will be days when the water is calmer. That is what is important in life, the fact that we all ended up here, above a ground that can sprout flowers and grass from hardly anything, the fact that we are all beneath an ever changing array of colours in the sky with fluffy looking shapes thrown up there too, the fact that out of billions and billions of living, breathing, unique personalities, we have all met at least one person who needs us to complete their picture for the short time they are here.
The most amazing thing of all about life is that even though bright lights twinkle in the sky every night and a huge ball of gas rises every morning to awaken different parts of the world at different times, and the fact that you could end up meeting the other half of your soul out of the blue when the time is right in a coffee shop, or book shop or on a train at the other side of the world, even though all of this happens, and so much more, it is absolutely incredible that people still don’t believe anything is possible. Look at your fingers, look at your toes, look at a newborn, look at a shooting star, look at someone you really, really love and then tell me you don’t believe in miracles. The fact that we are here at all is a complete miracle, never mind the added extras that bring everything to life. We are clearly here for a reason and with all of the things we have been lent here on Earth, there is no way that any of that reason is negative.
The truth is, fear is so real in society today, but I don’t just mean terror. The simple everyday fear is holding us back from creating extraordinary lives out of ordinary lives and making us all think “What if?” instead of “Oh well, we’re all just passing through!” The most amazing thing you can do with your life is to live it because we don’t know what lies around the corner. Live it so well that you impact every single person you meet in some way, but live it so beautifully humbly that you can also still appreciate your complete and utter insignificance when you stand barefoot on endless grains of sand and stare out at the horizon.
