Good.

So I'm moving overseas.
I've started culling through my possessions, throwing things away, creating multiple salvation army piles and giving things to friends all in preparation to move.
I have moved a lot in the last 5 years. Every time I move house, I find two things that just obliterate my emotions everytime.

The first is a letter from my dad. It is the single most beautiful, amazing, inspiring, incredible, honest thing I have ever read in my life. He wrote it for me in a time where we weren't really getting along and our relationship needed some mending. It's five yellow pages are stained with salty tear drops I've poured onto these pages every time I find that damn little shoebox that hides this beautiful literature. It is absolutely inspiring. I won't tell you anything from it because of how personal it is but every time I read it, I melt. It makes me proud of the family I belong to, proud of the man who is my number one role model and proud of myself as a person. I've had some down times, like anyone has and pulled out those letters because it re-assures me that I am on the right path in life with who I am as a person. My moral compass is true, I am a good person and I am loved. It's so touching because I question those things all the time. Every day.

I wish I was the kind of person who did things and didn't dwell on them. I wish my actions were made and I felt no regret, remorse or doubt. But unfortunately, I am not. I constantly question my own actions. Would the slightest difference have been a butterfly effect? I try, I really do, to make the correct choices in life. Sometimes though, I don't. I make horrible choices. I make decisions that ultimately really hurt other people. Those decisions are the ones that linger with me, not as a burden but as a reminder of what's good. We make mistakes all of the time and that's okay, we just have to grow a need to want to learn from them.


The other thing I find when I move is not another letter, but a book. A book written as a letter by an ex-girlfriend. We had a horrible relationship, with a varying range of issues on both our parts that ended quite horribly. When we broke up, she wrote me this letter in a book. After all of the drama, the fights, the tears and all of the bullshit she wrote some incredibly beautiful and lovely things. Again, I won't go into it heavily because it is a personal story of my life but one of my favourite bits of the whole letter is this part,
"I believe that someone could love me one day not because of the feelings you expressed for me but because of the ones I expressed for you and that maybe if I felt that way about you then someone, somewhere could feel that way about me"

I'll stop right here and say right now before you continue on reading - I don't feel the need to cover up or hide my real emotions on things. I try to be an honest person and share my true feelings on things. Yes, this is quite sappy, emotional and a bit lame but it's how I feel and putting it on paper helps me sort my mind out.

Anyway. To know that I touched someone in that way in my life is such an unbelievable feeling. Regardless of the fact things didn't work out between us, I feel as though the relationship both taught us more about life then we thought we'd have to learn.


This time moving however (after crying over the first two) I discovered something I don't normally. A brown paper bag filled with little notes. These notes are from a year 12 school camp where everyone had to write something lovely and nice about someone else and put it in there bag anonymously. Classic school camps right and who hangs onto that shit. Well, I do. Anyway so I opened up this bag and I started flicking through these notes until I got to one that I knew. It read,
"Chris, you're so supportive and caring to everyone. A gentleman"

I read the note and all the lovely mushy gooey feelings I had from my 2 letters were gone. I was overcome with the feeling of sadness. If you were to ask that person now what they would write on my anonymous card I can guarantee you it wouldn't be very reflective of me in a good light and they definitely wouldn't use the word gentleman. I understand that yes, people drift apart and they change and friendships end and that's life.

But I don't like that. I want to be best friends with the person I met ten minutes ago and best friends with the person I've known since grade two. Yes, people change and they grow but at the end of the day we're all people and the reasons why we can't all get along are so petty. Humans over complicate a lot of really simple things. Humans connecting should be the most basic thing.

Regardless of all of that, I look back at parts of my life and the way I handled things and interacted with others and I wish, using the things I know now, I could do them differently. The power of hindsight really is great. But unfortunately the past is the past and your actions are irreversible. The best two things we can do are:
1. Learn. Learn from our mistakes. Reflect on our actions. Pro-actively try to avoid past mistakes. Consciously make ourselves aware of our own actions, vocal and physical.
2. Forgive. Accept that everyone is still learning and growing and changing. They always will be. Every new day is different and scary and people make mistakes and that's okay because we're all humans and we all do it.

Taking risks on people and being open to getting hurt is good. It's really good. It's scary and risky but courage is doing what you are afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're afraid.

.

Cancer.

Have you ever thought that the problems in your life, are your own problems?
That they're so much your own, you even created them.
That perhaps the cancer in your life, is not,
Your job,
Your lack of money,
Your friends,
Your car,
Your house,
Your partner,
But perhaps,
It's you?

Are you your own worst enemy? What if you are the ultimate self-saboteur?
The only thing standing in your way on the path to success and happiness is your very own self?
Consider.

Things get shitty. If you think your friends are an issue in your life, so you destroy all bridges. Cut down all forms of friendship with the people you know only now as 'the past'. Find yourself some new friends and everything seems pretty great.

Things get shitty again. Your job, you hate that shit. Quit it? Righto. You give your boss the old, see ya later mate and you get yourself a new job. Everything again seems pretty great.

Things get shitty again. That's right, again. What's left? Your partner. The only remaining issue can surely only be them. You ditch your partner and go out and find yourself an 8 instead of a 7 this time. Surely that must've been the issue all along.

An upgraded partner, a brand new job, a sick new bunch of mates, life is bliss.

Then, what if it's not? How many different keys will you try in the door before realizing that maybe it's not the keys that are the issue, perhaps it's the lock.


Perhaps you need to be cautious of yourself every day. Perhaps every day you need to be aware of your actions and the person you are and are becoming. The constant consideration of your current  self for the undoubted betterment of your future self. Understanding of course that everyone else too must be facing the same battle and granting them fair slack for their mistakes on their same constant journey to be an improved person.

Change in life is good. Self-inflicted change is fantastic. Super fantastic. So if you're a person that's down with that well, shit man, you're a pretty cool dude. The issue people seem to struggle with is having change in their life that they don't have control over. The changes that occur with no warning or signs. One moment something is this, the next it's that. I think that's why people find death so hard. It's an inevitable factor of life. If you're born, you'll die. The hard part about that is that is you don't choose when your number's up, it just is. People always say they wouldn't find the passing of others so hard if they could just have known and been able to just say goodbye. But anyway, uncontrollable change! People freak out, they shut down, go into absolute mental fits when something doesn't go their way.

Why is that? When our surroundings change and life throws us a challenge or something different, why is it that we find it so hard to adapt to that? We should be able to cop something different and thrive from it. Isn't that living? Isn't that fantastic? Isn't that beautiful?
Life is a battlefield and we're all caught in the crossfire. Wouldn't it be incredible to run?
Just run.
Straight into that field.
Fuck the bullets.
Just run.
Live.
If your life is nothing but a battlefield, let's see how far you can make it.
Despite all the shit. Despite bullets pelting you, knocking you down. How many times are you going to get back up and keep running? I'll tell you how many. Infinite times. You'll kick yourself every time you do it and say 'why'. But you know why and that's what drives you to get back up each time. Get back up, pain throbbing, head pounding, heart aching, body burning, but you'll get back up regardless. You're a lot stronger than you think. Because you know, if you stay still and you don't get back up, well, you're already dead. If you're not trying to live, then the simple fact is you're not really living.



Being alive takes effort. Really living is a whole other story.
But isn't that what we're here for?
To live, not just survive.
Maybe there isn't a light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe this is it. You're in the light. For now, let's pretend it is because there sure as hell ain't no motivator to live as good as the fear of death.