Sunday, January 19, 2014
You are here.
When I was fifteen I imagined my eighteen year old self; I had moved out of home, I had a job, a credit card bill and a long term boyfriend. Then before I knew it, I was blowing out eighteen candles on a delicious chocolate cake and yet I still lived at home, I was still at school with a part time cafe job, I didn't have a credit card let alone the bill and I was definitely still single. It was almost hard to adjust my eyes to the vision of myself I'd imagined just three years earlier.
I can't think what my fifteen year old self would have imagined for my 'twenty-something's'. It seemed so far off. I'm sure a husband, a child or my own home was in there somewhere. That's certainly not a tale of the reality.
I also don't think my fifteen year old self would have imagined every thing I have done either. It would have been hard to believe if I had pre-eminated that I would have lived in both Paris and London for over two years, that I had circumnavigated Europe and visited numerous new countries with the change of each season. I'm sure I wouldn't have believed that someone could single handedly spend so much time at an airport.
At fifteen I kept looking up. I wanted those numbers to climb higher, I wanted to be the eighteen year old vision I had glistening in my mind. I wanted to be independent, know who I was, and what I wanted to be; eighteen would do this.
Now I'm 'twenty-something' and I keep looking across.
Engagements are filling my news feed. I find myself thinking of appropriate wedding gifts, baby shower presents and watching people I learnt algebra with suddenly start to expand with new life inside them. I look across at people wearing corporate suits and designer dresses toting briefcases and multi million dollar contracts. I see their expensive cars glide into freshly purchased homes. I see their lives cascading in front of them, their Saturday night dinner parties breaking up their Monday to Friday, 9-5. I look across, and I see everything I'm not. Everything I don't have. Everything that's different. How is their 'twenty-something', also mine? Where did our paths stop, and go in different directions? Did I miss a turn-off?
I was walking with my friends the other day and stumbled upon an old school friend who we hadn't seen in a few years. Sure, we can kept up to date virtually, through the wonders of social media, but a face-to-face catch up is better. Home for the summer, and unemployed after a long time spent travelling, she gazed in awe and amazement as we regaled our tales of travel. She'd never heard of Dubrovnik and she certainly didn't know the majestic feeling of walking through Paris at dusk on a mild summer evening. Then we listened intently as she enlightened us on the magic of her wedding day, the dress she wore, the things that went perfectly and the things that didn't. She showed us her ring and glanced at our naked fingers, empty of jewellery yet filled with experience. The places these fingers have been.
We told her of the frustration of being unable to speak a foreign language, of being close to an empty bank account or being stuck in the middle of nowhere with a large pack and no map. She told us of the struggle of marriage, the downs that accompany the ups, the compromising, the understanding, the collective independence.
Her Facebook page doesn't tell us that. It shows pure harmony, abundant smiles and perfect pose. Our Facebook pages show glittering sunsets, wide eyed laughter and new friends. Social media is a highlights reel of the movie of your life, the background moments are deleted scenes, hidden from view.
Looking across doesn't help. Comparison is irrelevant.
I might have expected to have a family or a mortgage or a corporate job by this age, but instead I have the ability to speak French, to navigate a new, big city and a camera full of memories from different parts of the world. I have friends in numerous countries and a wallet full of various currencies.
There isn't any worth in expecting the future, looking ahead to an assumed vision of your life or looking across to someone else's in a judgement of where you are.
At fifteen, I looked up. I looked up to eighteen, to independence, to assumed responsibility. I saw eighteen as the answer to my fifteen year old questions. Who I was, what I wanted, what I could become.
At twenty, I looked across. I looked across to others my age, to see what they had done, what they had accomplished. To compare my life experience to theirs in an assessment of whether I was in the right place whether I had done enough in life. Whether I had done the right things or whether I was falling behind the pack and letting my life slip by.
When I'm eighty, I'll probably look down. I'll look down on everything I've done and everything I haven't. I'll remember the memories, and the mistakes. I'll think back to when I was young and wild and free and able. I'll relive the last minute airport check-ins, the barefoot dancing under the glare of the moonlight, chasing the boy I liked over Parisian cobblestones and uninhibited laughter in the comfort of friends.
It's living the moment. Feeling the now. And appreciating that each second holds the chance for another risk, another adventure, another breath. It's about knowing that soon our knees will feel different, our eyes won't see the same, we won't move as fast or as much or as far. It's knowing that the memories will count.
One life cannot be compared to another. There is no right or wrong.
Live your own, just, live it. And live it well.
I can't think what my fifteen year old self would have imagined for my 'twenty-something's'. It seemed so far off. I'm sure a husband, a child or my own home was in there somewhere. That's certainly not a tale of the reality.
I also don't think my fifteen year old self would have imagined every thing I have done either. It would have been hard to believe if I had pre-eminated that I would have lived in both Paris and London for over two years, that I had circumnavigated Europe and visited numerous new countries with the change of each season. I'm sure I wouldn't have believed that someone could single handedly spend so much time at an airport.
At fifteen I kept looking up. I wanted those numbers to climb higher, I wanted to be the eighteen year old vision I had glistening in my mind. I wanted to be independent, know who I was, and what I wanted to be; eighteen would do this.
Now I'm 'twenty-something' and I keep looking across.
Engagements are filling my news feed. I find myself thinking of appropriate wedding gifts, baby shower presents and watching people I learnt algebra with suddenly start to expand with new life inside them. I look across at people wearing corporate suits and designer dresses toting briefcases and multi million dollar contracts. I see their expensive cars glide into freshly purchased homes. I see their lives cascading in front of them, their Saturday night dinner parties breaking up their Monday to Friday, 9-5. I look across, and I see everything I'm not. Everything I don't have. Everything that's different. How is their 'twenty-something', also mine? Where did our paths stop, and go in different directions? Did I miss a turn-off?
I was walking with my friends the other day and stumbled upon an old school friend who we hadn't seen in a few years. Sure, we can kept up to date virtually, through the wonders of social media, but a face-to-face catch up is better. Home for the summer, and unemployed after a long time spent travelling, she gazed in awe and amazement as we regaled our tales of travel. She'd never heard of Dubrovnik and she certainly didn't know the majestic feeling of walking through Paris at dusk on a mild summer evening. Then we listened intently as she enlightened us on the magic of her wedding day, the dress she wore, the things that went perfectly and the things that didn't. She showed us her ring and glanced at our naked fingers, empty of jewellery yet filled with experience. The places these fingers have been.
We told her of the frustration of being unable to speak a foreign language, of being close to an empty bank account or being stuck in the middle of nowhere with a large pack and no map. She told us of the struggle of marriage, the downs that accompany the ups, the compromising, the understanding, the collective independence.
Her Facebook page doesn't tell us that. It shows pure harmony, abundant smiles and perfect pose. Our Facebook pages show glittering sunsets, wide eyed laughter and new friends. Social media is a highlights reel of the movie of your life, the background moments are deleted scenes, hidden from view.
Looking across doesn't help. Comparison is irrelevant.
I might have expected to have a family or a mortgage or a corporate job by this age, but instead I have the ability to speak French, to navigate a new, big city and a camera full of memories from different parts of the world. I have friends in numerous countries and a wallet full of various currencies.
There isn't any worth in expecting the future, looking ahead to an assumed vision of your life or looking across to someone else's in a judgement of where you are.
At fifteen, I looked up. I looked up to eighteen, to independence, to assumed responsibility. I saw eighteen as the answer to my fifteen year old questions. Who I was, what I wanted, what I could become.
At twenty, I looked across. I looked across to others my age, to see what they had done, what they had accomplished. To compare my life experience to theirs in an assessment of whether I was in the right place whether I had done enough in life. Whether I had done the right things or whether I was falling behind the pack and letting my life slip by.
When I'm eighty, I'll probably look down. I'll look down on everything I've done and everything I haven't. I'll remember the memories, and the mistakes. I'll think back to when I was young and wild and free and able. I'll relive the last minute airport check-ins, the barefoot dancing under the glare of the moonlight, chasing the boy I liked over Parisian cobblestones and uninhibited laughter in the comfort of friends.
It's living the moment. Feeling the now. And appreciating that each second holds the chance for another risk, another adventure, another breath. It's about knowing that soon our knees will feel different, our eyes won't see the same, we won't move as fast or as much or as far. It's knowing that the memories will count.
One life cannot be compared to another. There is no right or wrong.
Live your own, just, live it. And live it well.
Flight or Flight.
There is no such thing as running away.
We're always running to something aren't we? I remember being eight years old and being told by my older brother that I couldn't join in a game of soccer with him and his friends. I was so angry I put a pair of socks, an apple, a notebook and pen and binoculars in a backpack and set off into the street. From the outside this probably looked like running away, to me it was finding a new brother. Someone with whom I could play.
I have done this countless times since then. I've usually packed a bit more and I haven't since been in search of a new brother (I've consented to the fact that I'm stuck with the one I've got,) but I've always thought that if I got sad, angry, sick or bored of my current circumstances, then it's necessary to change them.
Just like my teen magazines told me to never put up with a boyfriend that doesn't treat you well, the same goes for life. If it's not working out, strive for something more, something different. We all have the power to chase what we want. When you're eight years older it can seem a lot easier, but it's just as important when you're 25, 54 or 73.
I am definitely 'flight'. I don't think I have an ounce of 'fight' in me. I found myself in bed during a huge earthquake and I was under the nearest door frame before I even opened my eyes. I even have the hip bruises courtesy of my door-grazing desk to prove it. I am trained in 'flight'. When my city literally collapsed around me, I was on a one way bound plane to Paris within months.
I wasn't running away from my beloved home, I was running to safety, freedom, youth and experience; in my eyes this came in the form of an adventurous, action packed, exciting year in the city of romance. I was running smack bang into my twenty's, taking a leap of faith into the unknown, a blind step into a new life. I was running into my future, when I had previously seen it crumble around me.
I love airports. Sometimes I feel like I live at them for large periods of time. As if each new arrivals gate is another room in my travelling home; different languages signifying the diversity of an ever-changing abode.
I recently personally overheard an exclamation from a middle aged denim clad couple with pastel shirts and loafers standing close together and far from others remark on a tramping pack toting thirty-something striding through the arrivals, "I wonder what he's running from?"
Her manicured hands grabbed a shiny purse as her husband peered at the man, judgement seeping through his wide brimmed frames. I watched him stride through the shiny doors, his eager eyes searching the crowd. I watched as his tramping boots moved across the acrylic floor, past the tourist information office, the nearest ATM and the taxi stand sign. He swept past me and later, the designer couple, leaving a scent of pine, thistle and adventure, before bending down still wearing his pack, as a young toddler with a bright smile and a head covered in thick blonde curls ran clumsily into his arms. An older boy and a thirty-something wife followed eagerly with matching smiles ready across their faces.
We're not all running away from something, we're almost always running to it.
Numbers.
The bigger it gets, the less you look forward to it.
Remember when you're 6 years old and you look forward to your birthday for weeks? Months even. It's like it can't come fast enough. You repeatedly ask your Mum how many more days. Tell your Father incessantly what your plans are for the day. How you're going to have the biggest cake, eat the most food, play the coolest games. How all your friends will come around and those 3 hours when you're all together will be fun and action packed and adventurous. Your birthday was the best day, filled with excitement and joy.
Well, it used to be.
Then those numbers turned to double digits, you left your teens and the prospect of starting your age with 'twenty something' seemed like the start of a downhill track. As if the 20's slide into 40's before you even have a chance to enjoy the view, feel the moment and live the right now.
The beauty of the early digits is not in the small numbers, but in our unyielding ability to appreciate the moment. Our innocence, our naivety perhaps, allowed us to feel the thrill of the current pursuit, to know that the most important time is the current. Place yourselves in the shoes of your six year old self for a second, those bright, glittery ones, or the ones that had compasses on them, or even those multi coloured ones that kind of looked like bowling shoes. Place yourself in the time when birthday parties seemed to last all day, where so much happened and when your parents came to pick you up there was so much to tell. Remember that these parties mostly lasted two to three hours, but every single moment you thought about the moment you were living. You enjoyed the taste of the cake, the thrill of the chase in tag, the suspense of opening the presents and the constant chatter and giggling of being surrounded by your favourite friends.
You didn't think about next week's rent or the essay that needed to be handed in. You didn't think about the boyfriend who might be cheating on you or the flatmate that never cleaned. You didn't think past the hour, let alone past the day. You knew that now was good.
The moment makes the memory. And everything becomes a memory. We have no control over that. It has already been decided, prescribed and layed out, unchangeable. What we can control is the memory itself. We all want good ones. The memories like those 6 year old birthday parties.
We may have more to worry about as we grow older, I'm certainly not advising you skip out on rent, dump your boyfriend, drop out of school and quit your job in an attempt to make friends with 6 year olds and attempt to fit into those tiny ball pits and miniature playgrounds. But every moment can be lived, regardless of the number that society deems to define you.
Youth shouldn't define the way you live. A number shouldn't tell us how we should be, look or behave. Every day is another series of moments to be lived. Every day we get to choose what we store in that memory bank and every day we should take a little a bit of our 6 six year old self with us. That live in the moment, appreciate the now, nonchalant kind of mentality. That way the next birthday will roll around and you'll look back on the year that's passed and think about how long it felt, and how much you did, and how many moments you really lived.
You certainly can't stop the numbers climbing up, many a celebrity has attempted to physically reverse the inevitable and has merely ended up with less money in the bank and a better relationship with their surgeon. But you can decide whether that rising number really defines you, or whether you'll live like Abraham Lincoln where "it's not the years in your life that counts. It's the life in your years."
Remember when you're 6 years old and you look forward to your birthday for weeks? Months even. It's like it can't come fast enough. You repeatedly ask your Mum how many more days. Tell your Father incessantly what your plans are for the day. How you're going to have the biggest cake, eat the most food, play the coolest games. How all your friends will come around and those 3 hours when you're all together will be fun and action packed and adventurous. Your birthday was the best day, filled with excitement and joy.
Well, it used to be.
Then those numbers turned to double digits, you left your teens and the prospect of starting your age with 'twenty something' seemed like the start of a downhill track. As if the 20's slide into 40's before you even have a chance to enjoy the view, feel the moment and live the right now.
The beauty of the early digits is not in the small numbers, but in our unyielding ability to appreciate the moment. Our innocence, our naivety perhaps, allowed us to feel the thrill of the current pursuit, to know that the most important time is the current. Place yourselves in the shoes of your six year old self for a second, those bright, glittery ones, or the ones that had compasses on them, or even those multi coloured ones that kind of looked like bowling shoes. Place yourself in the time when birthday parties seemed to last all day, where so much happened and when your parents came to pick you up there was so much to tell. Remember that these parties mostly lasted two to three hours, but every single moment you thought about the moment you were living. You enjoyed the taste of the cake, the thrill of the chase in tag, the suspense of opening the presents and the constant chatter and giggling of being surrounded by your favourite friends.
You didn't think about next week's rent or the essay that needed to be handed in. You didn't think about the boyfriend who might be cheating on you or the flatmate that never cleaned. You didn't think past the hour, let alone past the day. You knew that now was good.
The moment makes the memory. And everything becomes a memory. We have no control over that. It has already been decided, prescribed and layed out, unchangeable. What we can control is the memory itself. We all want good ones. The memories like those 6 year old birthday parties.
We may have more to worry about as we grow older, I'm certainly not advising you skip out on rent, dump your boyfriend, drop out of school and quit your job in an attempt to make friends with 6 year olds and attempt to fit into those tiny ball pits and miniature playgrounds. But every moment can be lived, regardless of the number that society deems to define you.
Youth shouldn't define the way you live. A number shouldn't tell us how we should be, look or behave. Every day is another series of moments to be lived. Every day we get to choose what we store in that memory bank and every day we should take a little a bit of our 6 six year old self with us. That live in the moment, appreciate the now, nonchalant kind of mentality. That way the next birthday will roll around and you'll look back on the year that's passed and think about how long it felt, and how much you did, and how many moments you really lived.
You certainly can't stop the numbers climbing up, many a celebrity has attempted to physically reverse the inevitable and has merely ended up with less money in the bank and a better relationship with their surgeon. But you can decide whether that rising number really defines you, or whether you'll live like Abraham Lincoln where "it's not the years in your life that counts. It's the life in your years."
Thursday, January 2, 2014
2.0.1.4.
2014, they say.
To be honest, the day just ticked over for me. Normality. Regularity. Mundanity (?)
I looked out the window as the numbers changed and the 2013 became nothing more than a memory. My vision was littered with escalating light; blue, green and red was shooting up at dizzying speeds wide across the city. I let it burn into my eyes until all that was left was the empty darkness, like a blanket dropped on the city. The madness, revelry and inevitable chaos dissolved by silence.
I stood and watched, and wondered. What will this year bring?
Seeing it in with my Mum (and father by absence, he was there in dreamland) wasn't even depressing. It took being invited to a party that I didn't want to go to for me to know that I didn't want to feel like Harry Potter in a sea of muggles. My preference lay in being with people who's space I appreciated, rather than wondering why I was surrounded by people that, just like 2013, would soon be only a memory. I wanted to know that 2014 would be entered into through my own choices, that I would chose the fate I could control in the way I wanted.
Resolutions are silly, we all know that. But it is the distinct feeling that merely by making any, by simply putting a couple of words, a few bullet points down on a piece of paper, that we are halfway to achieving them. As if that act itself is part of the resolution. I can only imagine that 90% of people have "make new years resolutions at the top of their to-do list". Many will fail.
I make them every year.
Unaware why, and with only a half hearted attempt to really think what I want another year in the unknown to bring, I charter on with pen and paper. Wondering if the words I put together will still mean anything in months, even weeks. An amalgamation of a moment, an attempt to predict my attitude to the future.
This year, simplicity. No, that's not a resolution, that's literally my approach to the task. I felt bullet points were relevant - quick, easy, and its easier to stick to the task when you draw the bullet point and then feel the daunting obligation to fill it.
- confidence.
- daring.
- ambition.
- opportunity.
- gratitude.
Why is life divided into moments? Why do we insist on choosing one day to collate all our aspirations for 365 days?
Live each day. Make constant and consistent choices to be a better person, live the life you desire. Don't wait for the one day of the year where you are most likely to be hungover, feel like not moving and eating yourself through the bakery section of the supermarket, to make impacting decisions about the rest of the year.
Push forward and make every moment count. Live in the now, and live it up.
To be honest, the day just ticked over for me. Normality. Regularity. Mundanity (?)
I looked out the window as the numbers changed and the 2013 became nothing more than a memory. My vision was littered with escalating light; blue, green and red was shooting up at dizzying speeds wide across the city. I let it burn into my eyes until all that was left was the empty darkness, like a blanket dropped on the city. The madness, revelry and inevitable chaos dissolved by silence.
I stood and watched, and wondered. What will this year bring?
Seeing it in with my Mum (and father by absence, he was there in dreamland) wasn't even depressing. It took being invited to a party that I didn't want to go to for me to know that I didn't want to feel like Harry Potter in a sea of muggles. My preference lay in being with people who's space I appreciated, rather than wondering why I was surrounded by people that, just like 2013, would soon be only a memory. I wanted to know that 2014 would be entered into through my own choices, that I would chose the fate I could control in the way I wanted.
Resolutions are silly, we all know that. But it is the distinct feeling that merely by making any, by simply putting a couple of words, a few bullet points down on a piece of paper, that we are halfway to achieving them. As if that act itself is part of the resolution. I can only imagine that 90% of people have "make new years resolutions at the top of their to-do list". Many will fail.
I make them every year.
Unaware why, and with only a half hearted attempt to really think what I want another year in the unknown to bring, I charter on with pen and paper. Wondering if the words I put together will still mean anything in months, even weeks. An amalgamation of a moment, an attempt to predict my attitude to the future.
This year, simplicity. No, that's not a resolution, that's literally my approach to the task. I felt bullet points were relevant - quick, easy, and its easier to stick to the task when you draw the bullet point and then feel the daunting obligation to fill it.
- confidence.
- daring.
- ambition.
- opportunity.
- gratitude.
Why is life divided into moments? Why do we insist on choosing one day to collate all our aspirations for 365 days?
Live each day. Make constant and consistent choices to be a better person, live the life you desire. Don't wait for the one day of the year where you are most likely to be hungover, feel like not moving and eating yourself through the bakery section of the supermarket, to make impacting decisions about the rest of the year.
Push forward and make every moment count. Live in the now, and live it up.
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