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.

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