Life is short

Life is short.
It’s something that we hear all the time, but how often do we ever really appreciate it? How often do we stop and think about how quickly the last three months, or three years have gone by, and how quickly the next three years will go too. Life is short. It’s a cliché but only because it is true.

Nothing is certain in this life. Time is relative; a week of bliss can feel just as long and be just as significant as a month of depression. Plans are unstable; no matter how much you try to predict and prepare for something in your life there is never a guarantee that things will work out exactly how you want them to. The future is ambiguous. And that’s what makes it so exciting! If we knew everything we were going to do before we did it, if we knew how everything was going to work out we would have no adventures in life, no passion to drive us, no joy in success. Yet, things don’t always work out the way that we hope, and when they don’t it's devastating. Planning and hoping and trying can only get you so far in life. Sometimes the rest is up to fate, up to whatever unknown force there is out there that guides our lives.

Six months from now I could (and probably will) be living in a different country. One week from now I could get struck down by lightning. One year from now I could meet the love of my life and live happily every after or ten years from now I could be a grumpy spinster with six cats living in a shack. Six years from now I WANT to earn a PhD and start my life earning a living in a field I am passionate about. Who the hell knows if that will be the case?!

Life is short, and every day we wake up thinking I wish I could do this or I want that, but then we catch ourselves and let ‘logic’ kick in and talk us out of it.
“I want to buy that pair of shoes that I have wanted for months... But no, I already have a pair very similar and should wait until I have more money to spare.”
“Boy do I want to eat a tub of ice cream and veg out for a day... But wait, I am going to a beach themed party in a couple hours and want to look good in a bikini.”
“Man I really wish I could tell that person how I feel... But what if they don’t reciprocate?”
These are the things we face every day. These are the ‘trivial’ matters that we talk ourselves out of because we let our heads override our hearts.

A wise friend told me that there are two parts to every conscience. There is the human side: the rational, logical, prepared side that measures every out come before we act. And then there is the animal side: the raw, unadulterated, irrational, passionate part that has a desire and fixates on that until the desire is either met or repressed. They are in constant battle with each other. Life is too short to let the human side win!
Sometimes, yes, it really is best to make the safe choice. But sometimes it’s ok - better even! - to make the choice that will make you happy. However fleeting that happiness may be.
Buy that pair of shoes. Eat the damn ice cream. Tell that person how you feel!
It is better to live, and learn from a mistake than to live with regret. Or worse, to always wonder if you would have been happier if you had trusted your gut.

Sometimes you just have to take off your floaties and jump in the deep end. If you’re lucky, you will learn how to swim.

Age is not just a number

I have realised that age is not a number. It is a state of mind. It’s a decision that you make, over and over again. And you don’t always choose the same age. You don’t have to.

Some days I feel silly. I want to watch cartoons and drink hot chocolate and lie on the couch whining until my roommate cooks me dinner like my mother used to when I was 5.
Some days I feel like I’m back in high school. I’m 17 again and adolescent tunnel vision convinces me that the one small problem I am facing is the be all and end all of my entire life, and that gossip is fundamental.
Some days I feel older than my years. I’m working in a probation court and the experienced people that I work with tell me that I can have any job I set my sights on once I graduate because I am mature, eloquent, and intelligent.
And some days I just feel 21. Sitting at a bar with my best friend drinking a beer or two and catching up on the last couple weeks.

Age is not a number until you make that number define you or your relationships. I know 21 year olds that still act like children and I know 15 year olds that have grown up much too quickly.
I have grown more in the last two months than I did in the time between my 20th and my 21st birthdays. Years do not make your age; experiences make your age, lessons make your age. YOU choose your age. There is no right or wrong choice.

Size matters

I am five feet, two and a half inches tall. I weigh one hundred and ten pounds. I am a small person. But I am big.

I think the size of a person should not be measured by their height or stature. It should not be measured by physical appearance at all (few things should be). I think the size of a person should be determined by their spirit. By their aspirations, their thoughts and opinions, their views, their dreams. The size of a person should not be determined by how big they are in front of you, but by how much of an impact they leave on you.

I am five feet two and a half inches tall, I weigh one hundred and ten pounds. But I am big.

I have travelled. I have walked some of the oldest streets and seen lively new cities. I have lived in five different countries and I have learned – in and out of a classroom. I have experienced things that no one else has experienced in the same way, and others have experienced many things I never have.

I have dreams. Hopes to one day have a career. Plans to travel more, and travel often. I have goals I aspire to and experiences to leave in my past. I have a past. A road less travelled by, but well travelled by me. Some paths that shaped me and some paths I wish I had never stumbled upon. Those paths shaped me too. I have a past that has made me who I am, and a future that I strive towards.

I have words. I use them when I can but mostly they use me. They flow out of me as midnight ramblings and cross-country musings. They shape me more than I shape them.

I have talents. Some stronger than others and some I am not even aware of yet. I have skills that I can boast of and weaknesses that I try to improve upon. I have faults. Many faults. But my strength is in admitting them.

I have friends. Not everyone may want to be with me, but the friends that I have do. They choose to spend their time with me, choose to trust me with their friendship as I trust them with mine. Some admire me, some want to help me, some barely know me, some love me. Not everyone needs to love me, but the people I care about care about me. For the most part.

I am not saying this to be conceited. I do not wish to paint an elevated picture of myself. I am saying this because I think confidence is important. Focusing on your own strengths is much more productive than tearing yourself down one flaw at a time.

I know people that are medium sized. They think more than they act. They talk about dreams that they do not work towards, they make promises they do not keep.
I know people that are small. They’re narrow minded with simple ambitions. They do not believe in themselves or, sometimes, they believe themselves better than others.
And I know people that are giant. Bigger than their skin, bigger than their past; as large as any dreams that they are working towards.
I have met many people in my short lifetime: it’s the big ones that leave an impact.

Be big.

Little Things

It’s the little things.
Sometimes you have to stop and think about the small things, the minute details, the every day acts that go unnoticed.

It’s easy to get consumed by the big things – by the heart break, by the abandonment, by the sadness and the stress. Those things consume you; they get in your head and surround you, pull at you from all sides and eat away at you in every spare moment. They fill the empty space in your mind, they become a body that sits with you on the train on the way to work and lies next to you in your big bed that now feels empty. Try to ignore them. It’s hard, but focusing on these demons is no good; they are demanding enough without you actively paying attention to them.

Focus on the little things. The smile from a colleague at work in the middle of a busy day. The feeling of accomplishment when you manage to succeed in something other than focusing on the negative thoughts in your head and your heart. The friends reaching out to you in ways you hadn’t even thought of. The dinner dates and movie nights that keep your mind off of things. The sitting on the couch with your roommate all day on a Sunday and doing absolutely nothing and being perfectly okay with it. It’s the people. The people are big - bigger than the problems. They are hope, they are caring, they are the strength that you lack for the time being. They are the rehab.

Focus on the little things while the big things are focusing on you. Eventually those small moments of happiness will be the big parts of your life again.

Dear world...

Dear world, I am not perfect.

I try to be a good friend. I go out of my way for others and I never really ask the same. I bend over backwards because my friends’ happiness is 90% of my happiness (and their troubles are 90% of my troubles). It’s just who I am. I give 100% 100% of the time, but sometimes it still isn’t enough. Sometimes I’m distant or sometimes I need to be a little bit selfish.

I try to be a perfect student. I care about my classes. I study when I have an exam and I do my homework always and to the best of my ability. I write papers like my life depends on it! Yet I am not a straight A student and don’t know how to give any more to my work than I already give.

I try to have my life in order. I worked a summer internship, a campus job for class credit, I stressed about finding a Coop and would not settle for anything but what I thought I deserved. Yet I have never had a paying job so what does that say about my expertise?

I try to be a good girlfriend. But crying to my boyfriend and making my problems his own is not fair to him.

I try to sleep. I wake up, go to class, go to work, do my homework, spend time with friends, and try to find a minute to myself. By then I end up lying in bed at 1 am having a sordid affair with insomnia.

I try to be a good blogger, but sometimes life gets in the way.

I am a good sister. I think. I am a good daughter. I hope. I am good. I try to be good in everything I do. What if trying isn’t enough? I stretch myself too thin and I’m thin enough already.

Dear world, I am not perfect, so please cut me some slack.

Wings

Travelling is stressful. I’ll be the first to admit it. The hassle of fitting a life into a single suitcase; the annoyingly long layover, or, frighteningly short connections; the food (if you can call it that); the crying babies; the sleeplessness and restlessness in your soul to reach the journey’s end. Yet, it is all worth it once you do. Whether you return home (or in my case, one of many homes), or, step into a new adventure, it is always worth it once you do.

As I drive down a London highway on a rare English summer day I cannot help but feel the hope that the end is in sight. And, once it is all said and done (the feat of surviving an embassy, the seemingly unnecessary over night stay, the same-clothes-for-two-days-straight experience), then I start to believe it wasn’t all for nothing.
For, as the plane touches down and the final part of my journey comes to an end, my adventure begins. I am free.

Free to extend my hidden wings, to stretch and exercise them. Shake the dust off the gilded feathers so the world can see them in all their glory. I’ll be free to soar, incandescent, as the light of new adventure and the warmth of new knowledge catches the glistening wings of my exploration. Like stretching your muscles before you exercise, each tendon and ligament contracting individually, causing a slow, delicate ripple of strength: exciting.

Yes, travelling is a hassle. Because you have to keep those wings folded, guarded, hidden, lest the adventure be clipped before it’s time. But, once the wings are free to extend in their full unabashed glory of curiosity, of wanderlust, then nothing can hold you down.

Some things never change

One thing I’ve always had a hard time wrapping my head around is this: for the most part, things stay the same. For someone like me, whose life is consistently changing, growing, evolving, it is hard for me to realise that some things never change.

I always thought that when I moved yet again, when I was ripped out of the place I had become most comfortable and had to say goodbye to the people I was closest to, that everything would change. I thought that the place I was leaving would be a different place entirely if and when I ever came back to it. I thought my favourite corners; my streets of memories; my sentimental buildings would all crumble without me, their foundation to keep them standing. The truth is: life goes on.

I always assumed that when a life is lost, a truly beautiful, inspiring, innocent life sacrificed to such atrocities as cancer or time, that the world would never recover. I thought when the people I loved were lost that everything in everyone’s world had to change as everything in my world had just done. You might think this thought naïve but there is a word for this naïveté: egocentrism. It is the honest belief that everyone experiences the world as you experience it; that the things that are important to you must be important to everyone; that your sadness is everyone’s sadness and your happiness is everyone’s happiness.

I learnt about this term in a Developmental Psychology class. The exact phrase is ‘Adolescent Egocentrism’, and I think rightly so. One of the most eye-opening realisations you can come to as you grow up and fully begin to understand the world is that this is the furthest thing from the truth. No one experiences the world the same way you experience it, and that is what makes you so perfectly unique (and I truly believe unique is the best thing a person can be in this world). The things that are important to you are only important for that reason: you, if everyone held the same things to the same import everything would be considered important and in that, nothing would be. Your sadness is your own because the things that make a person sad are the things that make them who they are: what they care about, what affects them, what triggers emotion, these things are unique to everyone and that is what breeds diversified thinking. Likewise, the things that make a person happy, that truly appeal to them on a satisfactory level, that offer them comfort and joy both when they need it and when they don’t, these things define a person and must define each person individually.

For instance: the things that make me happy are good friends, good books, good science fiction and my boyfriend. My family, my writing, my travels, my studies, the list goes on! Obviously, these things will not be the same for everyone; my list of what makes me happy cannot make everyone else happy. And that is ok.
Suffice to say, I have come to realise that for the most part the things and places you leave behind when you go out to explore yourself are not what change: you are. Slowly, you begin to evolve out of adolescent egocentrism and appreciate that when you left high school that was the world you knew, but when you come back from college that world is exactly the same, you are the one that makes it different. You see the same halls you walked and streets you drove home on entirely differently than when you saw them before. You fit differently in your childhood bed that might be an inch too small now. You see a different view when you look out the window and imagine what is beyond the horizon.

When I left Trinidad I was young, impatient, and bored. I returned now two years later ready to bring my exploring home. I realised I know more about the various countries I have lived in that the one I was born in. When I realised this I realised that knowing that the places we explore never change brought me comfort. Every time I visit or re-visit somewhere I know that I will see the same place through new eyes, and knowing that now is yet another thing that makes me happy.