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On Your Mark, Get Set…JUMP!

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Every fall season seems like a new beginning, at least to me it does.  Many people tend to disagree with me as the natural and most popular rebirth season is spring.  You know, the whole winter thaw, new flowers bloom, trees start to get their leaves, the birds come back from winter hiatus. Although the season after summer has its own life beginning and life changing intrigues, please ponder the following.

A four-year old child.  This child has been at home or at a daycare.  Turning four means that they are going to big people school, a.k.a. kindergarten.  School all day.  There are activity tables that can be comprised of any of the following:  drawing, painting, water, crayons.  There are dolls so they can play house or doctor or whatever else pops into their little four-year old minds.  There is a teacher.  There are other kids who will be playing with them and calling them “friend”.  There are crafts that they will do with their teacher.  Scary?  A little.  It’s different from the usual.  Exciting and a little overwhelming, but they are ready to jump in.

Transition again from kindergarten to grade one.  Very different.  Your own desk and projects to do.  There is this thing called homework.  There will be tests.  Will you still have your kindergarten friends in your class or will there be new people?  Ready, set…jump in.

Let’s go higher up….grade 8.  Last year of middle school.  After this year there is a progression to high school.  What will your last year be like?  You are a senior…in middle school anyway.

Minor Niner.  Welcome to high school.  Quite a traumatic experience as there will be many new students and many of your old friends won’t be in your classes this year.  There are semesters and many more tests and challenges; especially the desire to fit in.  This will all be recorded in the yearbook.  What courses should you take?  Where will go after high school?  University?  College?  A trade?  A job?  Again, many decisions.  Life through school is very nerve-wracking.  It’s determining who you are.  Many people will be there in the shaping and moulding of your life.   You won’t realize it at the time, but looking back, you will see who and what influenced your life.

Now, let’s say you didn’t finish high school.  Where did your life take you?  Did you go into the workforce?  Did you travel?  Did you move out on your own from the house you grew up in?  What made you take a leap of faith and move into the direction you moved?

It’s fall again.  The older I get, the more I want to take more time for myself and my dreams.  I believe I am in the fall of my life.  There are brilliant explosions of colours (my desires) running through my mind.  There are changes I want in my life.  There are things I was always afraid to do because I thought I would be criticized or laughed at.  It doesn’t matter anymore.  Now, it’s my opinion of myself and my self-love that will make me succeed.  Fear of failure?

Failure now has a new definition. To me the definition of failure means that I didn’t try something new as opposed to trying and not having it end up perfectly.  Perfection is quite subjective.  Depends on who is looking at it.

In the fall of my life I have decided to take a job that would put me much farther from home.  It’s a position I have some knowledge about, but there will be much new learning.  Excited?  Absolutely.  Scared?   Strangely, not really.  I am totally confident in my ability to learn.  I know that I can do anything.  There is no fear of failure.  Is that a bad thing?  I am not sure.  I know when I used to perform on stage the nervousness before was part and parcel of a good, confident performance.  Over confidence usually meant something would go wrong.  Is that the same with jobs?  Perhaps.  I am not afraid to ask for help.  Pride is the only thing that could hurt me.  I like my new vision of life and all that change can hold for me.  The need to try new things is exhilarating instead of frightening.  I am happy to have swallowed my dreaded fear of failure.

I am certain that with change there will be hurtful experiences in my life.  Daring to try new things, even if it means failure, proves that I  have stepped outside my comfort zone and into the realm of the adventurous.  My desire to learn and experience new things is keeping my life exciting and exhilarating and that is how I believe life should be lived.

Hurrah for me!

On your mark…get set…jump in!

 

Forgive and (maybe forget)…but move on

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Life is interesting.  A simple,  blasé thought perhaps, but true.  Life and the meaning of life is so different depending on where you find yourself on this so-called journey.  Is life about finding the “why am I here?” answer.  Is life about just having fun?  Is life about suffering so that you can live in a wonderful afterlife?  There are many schools of thought.  In the quest to figure out what life is about, I have been introduced to two specific types of people and I have been incredibly lucky to have met both types:  help you and hurt you.  Both of them have provided me with life changing experiences.

Through years of living (lucky me) and having my life journey cross the paths of others, I have learned, I have taught, I have lived.  I have had the pleasure and honour of meeting people that have helped me move forward in a happy direction.  I have also had the displeasure of meeting those that used me, abused me, and discarded me like a piece of refuse.  I am truly grateful to have met both.  Why?

There were those who appreciated me and helped me.  They showed me that there are true “givers” in the world.  These individuals taught me that kindness exists.  There are people willing to unconditionally assist you and help you grow.  There is no need for paybacks or “owe-sies”.  It’s about being a kind human, with feelings of love for their fellow man. A desire to let others grow.

Then there were the selfish folk.  Those who pretended to be there for me, but were really trying to figure out how I could help them out and make their lives better.  It usually ended with me being shocked, injured, scarred, and with a feeling of great injustice.  Lies, accusations, leaving me feeling worthless, dejected, lonely, unloved.   My extreme hatred of them negatively affected me, both physically and emotionally.  Why would I be grateful to these dregs of society?  They taught me to love.  Crazy?  Maybe, but I became a happier person when I learned to forgive and move on with living my joyful life.

Forgiveness…sounds simple but is oftentimes so hard to actually fulfill.  Forgiveness is not about condoning bad behaviour.  Forgiveness is about letting go of the anger and the hate you live with.  Think about it this way, you are hurt and angry and cannot believe that someone you trusted would hurt you.  You hate them and want to ensure that they suffer as you did.  You obsess about it.  How do these spiteful, vengeful thoughts actually hurt them?  Do they care that you are hurting?  No.  Do they feel any of your pain?  No.  Who is actually hurting?  You.  You are holding venom inside you and only damaging yourself.  The ones who betrayed you don’t even think about how they treated you and really couldn’t case less about how you feel or what you think about them.  They used you and then removed you from their lives.  In forgiveness, you are actually freeing yourself.  You are going to let bygones be bygones and go on to live a happier life.  If anything, these transgressors will probably be even more upset to learn that you are happy and are not affected in any way by past incidents.  That is the “giving” part of forgiveness.  You are “giving” yourself freedom; to love, to trust, to find joy, and your own peace of mind.

Those that rejected me were there to teach me that I did not need their approval or love to exist in a happy life.  Loving myself was and is most important.  Letting their misdeeds go so that they didn’t affect me emotionally was critical to my future happiness.  Forgive and forget?  I would forgive.  The forgetting was not something that I would or could easily do.   I truly believed it was important to remember past misdeeds so that in future I wouldn’t fall into the same circumstance …a.k.a. “Life Lesson”.

Thank you to those wonderful people in my life, past and present, who have been there for me when I didn’t have the strength to live by own convictions and beliefs.  You held my hand and guided me out of the muck of negativity that was sucking me in.  You brought me to the surface and breathed new life into my soul.  Words really cannot express my gratitude for having you in my life.

Thank you to the leaches and the soul suckers who made my life miserable.  Your thoughtlessness and selfishness taught me that I am worthy of love from others and especially from myself.  You made me work harder to live my life in the polar opposite way that you live your life.  Thankfully, your kind has disappeared from my life and I am surrounded by beautiful spirits who appreciate goodness, kindness, happiness, and a joie to vivre.  Truly, without my trials and tribulations that you exposed me to, I would not be living the great life that I now live

“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” ~Maya Angelou

“Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.” ~C.S Lewis