People say- sometimes I’m just not in the mood for these Positive quotes, books, or the look from an all-knowing stranger. They get almost irritated by affirmations and the very words of motivation get on their very nerves. Especially when someone says – You only live once, keep calm it will all get better etc. I feel them as I know what they are talking about, with the person I actually am, I should be taking my own advice and seeing the joy in it all. But I guess sometimes it’s hard to be the best version of yourself. I try not to look for validation in people, in relationships and even social media if I can possibly help it. So, there are times when I just want my life and the day to just flow and let me be. So, people are not entirely wrong.
But strangely or not, I don’t think there are any co-incidences in life. We meet people when we have to. So, when I met this lovely woman in a bookstore, (all the way from LA), and her way of life was that she was a speaker. I was just a tad skeptical, since my mind just did an instant recoil, had I already written her off? Why? Too many people saying the same thing, even me. Reaching out via talks, podcasts, books movies, you name it and it was happening. But I have always gone to saying that- we do not meet people by accident, they are meant to cross our paths for a reason, either they change our lives or we change theirs. That got me back on track.
That’s when I chose to sit down and write about exactly what people are talking about, starting with- Have you ever wondered? So many of us are broken (it’s definitely not a bad word). So many are survivors, so many of us are coping and so many of us need help and we are just too proud to ask. And how do we know that? Scars? Yes! some physical, and some emotional. The physical ones are the ones that show a survivor, they tell stories better than tattoos, forming parts of a map to show journeys to where we have been in this lifetime, and how far we have walked in our own shoes. The mental scars are our invisible memories, perhaps of battles that we have fought and ultimate moments of tragedy. Causing anxiety, the wounds take longer to heal, the pain almost gets hard to explain, because those damn scars reside yet inside one’s brain. But if they cannot be seen, we should at least be able to tell others how we feel.
It’s so important that all of us recognize our happy places. For some it can be on a beach beside the sea, planting seeds in one’s garden, or just being home with the family. For some it’s taking their doggies for a walk, stroking cats in their laps, snuggled up in their beds, be it sleeping or just dreaming, or just reading a book in the arms of somebody they love. Travelling to unravel their minds, being peaceful in a park, making shapes in the clouds above them. In a Gym, in a cafe, in a library, at a restaurant, a cinema or a concert, on the sofa watching the news with a glass of wine, in a pub with friends, in a bathtub sitting amongst a million bubbles and sighing at the scented candles. Long drives in the countryside, fast biking on a highway. We all have this need for freedom, and an inherent sense of well-being, the need to dance like the flames of a log fire, being able to restore our souls, and bring back the Joi de vivre in our lives.
But no! we choose to live with first world problems like- to keep clearing spam, accepting cookies, constantly changing or forgetting passwords, for online access. Knowing full well that a message has been read but it is being ignored and ghosted, not getting the amount of likes we expect, living with a cracked screen or a bad signal on the phone. Being hungry but not in the mood for real food, forgetting what we want, forgetting people’s names, losing the TV control, any control for that matter, suffering slow wifi and videos buffering, the list being endless. But we all have dramas, however trivial, and the beat goes on.
And all this causes us feelings of fatigue, nervousness and anxiety, not to mention over thinking, and worst-case scenarios. So, does it feel like you are tired of being tired, feeling like you crashed and burned, thinking that you have worked so hard that you feel it’s all for nothing? Feeling and believing that you are at the bottom of the league, and quite convinced that you are the provincial odd one out, of feeling like it’s tough to try to feel alive and not like you are dying. Like every day is an uphill task and you have to keep marching on.
What we forget in our ever so busy lives is that every day is a brand-new day, a blank page. It really is up to us to take center stage or wait in the wings, how we act, how we believe that there’s no one better than us simply because there’s only one of us. We should be able to dance to our own tune, sing the song in our heart, look for the best in every situation, learn from every situation, the lessons meant for us. Perhaps we can look for the changes that we can make by letting our pasts go.
