I write a lot of blog posts, however it is only a few that make it to being published on the Internet, for eyes other than my own to read (and hopefully enjoy). These posts tend to be the ones that I feel the most strongly about; ones that I have sat down and written pretty much start to finish, with minimal editing before I hit the little "publish" button and invite others into what can be quite a vulnerable part of my mind. I'm going to try my best to do that with this post - to write something quickly but coherent (and hopefully at least slightly concise) - my thoughts after seeing The Fault in our Stars. "My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations" and while I don't necessarily feel that my thoughts are stars, I hope you excuse my incoherent ramblings on a movie that made me think.
As I was sitting there, nestled between two friends in a movie theatre (all three of us crying, and me sharing my tissue box because they weren't prepared), I started forming this post in my mind. A lot of what I thought and constructed in my head I can no longer remember, however hopefully as I write the ideas will come back to me.
We live in a world that is full of contraries - light and dark, life and death, good and bad. This idea is not new. However, it became apparent to me as we sat in dimmed light, just how ugly and cruel the world actually is. We live lives where disease tears families apart, and a lot of the time, there is nothing that can be done about it. The world is so ugly, it really is.
The thing is though, and what makes me struggle with life sometimes, is that the world is also so beautiful. I've made such an effort lately to think this every morning (occasionally illustrated through a wide eyed, grinning SnapChat), because when I think this, I see the beauty in the world that I would otherwise ignore should I be stuck in a typical mindset of a teenager on a Tuesday morning who has to get up at 7 to go to work. The world is beautiful because there is laughter; the world is beautiful because there is chocolate and hugs and ballet and puppies. There are people with beautiful hearts and beautiful souls.
I think we sometimes miss the beauty of the world when we are locked up in our every day lives - we miss it because it is what we are used to. The sunset is beautiful, yes, but when we see it everyday on the walk we have to take the dogs on, we don't appreciate it anymore. Sometimes, it's the people who are living less beautiful and fortunate lives who understand and appreciate beauty more - even if it isn't what we'd usually lend the term "beauty" to.
I don't think I have ever seen so many smiles and so much happiness over a two week period than what I saw when I was teaching in Cambodia. Khmer people live a life with opportunities that pale in comparison to what we experience in the Western world - disease and sickness lurk around every corner, the government is corrupt and it's a struggle for kids to eat enough food so that they grow. However, they seemed so much happier with that they had than we seem with what we have, even though we are so much luckier. Everyone has their own tragedies - it's hard to say that someone is luckier than someone else, because our lives and the pains that we experience are relative to everything else we have experienced in our lives. However, if Khmer kids are happy with a new set of volunteers arriving from countries that they have dreamt of, I want to be happy with a sunset.
It's probably the same for a cancer ward - yes, there is heartbreak, and extreme amounts of it. It's awful and it's sad, and I'm not underestimating this in any way. I cannot imagine anything worse than seeing a loved one sick, and in pain. However, there is also love, light, and happiness - moments that would normally be considered average and normal, such as an 8 year out getting old of bed and going to school for the first time in two weeks - are celebrated and bring so much joy to her parents, her siblings, her nurses, her teachers.
We die. That's a fact. I'm going to die, you're going to die. However in this limited amount of time we have on Earth, I want to make the most of it. I don't want to get to the end of my life and think, as I sit in purgatory or whatever there is after death, "Damn. I really wish I had done more of that". We don't really know how much time we have left living and that scares me enough into squeezing every inch out of my life when I can. Unfortunately, we don't get a sand timer that counts down our moments left living - we have to take a gamble and hope that if we died tomorrow, we'd be happy with the life that we led.
I used to often catch myself in the dangerous mind game of "why am I doing this? I'll die anyway, and no one will remember or care in 50 years". And yeah, I will. So will you (sorry to keep reminding you of that, I know some people try not to think about it). It's discouraging to think this, even though it's true. It's dangerous because you can get so used to existing because "what's the point?" that you stop living. So why would I not live my life with happiness and live it to the max? It's not going to make me live a shorter amount of time (depending on my choices), and it's going to make my life much richer.
As some of you know, I screwed up my back a little while ago, to the point that a lot of what I used to love to do I can now no longer do, or enjoy to the same extent that I used to. This does upset me quite a lot, especially on days when I'm in a lot of pain, or when something is happening that I can't go to. However, I've realised that there is no point in me sitting around whining about how I can't dance right now, about how I can't go out clubbing, because my complaints aren't going to give me more days to live after I sort out whatever is wrong - they're only wasting the days that I have.
Try to be positive, try to be on a "roller coaster than only goes up, my friend" (if you need to do that with a wide eyed SnapChat, that's okay too). Find someone who can give you "forever within the numbered days", because at the end of the day, it's not about quantity - it's about quality. Go out there, realise the cruelty of the world, appreciate the beauty of it, and understand that those two things are not mutually exclusive. Live your life to the max, because you never know when it will end.
Okay?
Okay.
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