The world is changing.
Technological advances, new discoveries, new ways of living.
Pressure. Stress. Busyness.
Debt. Materialism. Iphonitis.
In my generation we were expected to go to school, after school, to go on to further study.
These days you need a doctorate of that further study to be picked out of a line up for jobs.
Adolescence becomes the breeding ground for anxiety, stress, alcoholism, drug addiction, dangerous sex and breakdowns because we are forever looking forwards.
And the future, the big unknown, is freaking scary.
There is a myriad of things you can do with your life but we pressure adolescents to think that their choices now are their future. We try to tell them that doing good in school is the only way to success. How many people have been held back by fear? Have stopped doing what they love because someone says that there is more security in another field? Where does that lost potential go?
We need to stop looking so far out into the horizon.
When you get a boyfriend, people ask you when you are going to get married?
When you get married people ask you when are you having kids?
When you have your first baby, people ask if you are having more?
Keep your eye on the prize people.
When’s the promotion? When’s the pay rise? When’s the next holiday?
We are so used to looking forward that the majority of us are never present.
How many of you remember people’s names when you are introduced? If you do then you are one of the few who are actually present, in the present.
How many of you enjoy the prize when you get there?
The holiday wasn’t up to expectations- of course it wasn’t because you were friggin there for the last month in your head and God, your imagination did not include a bout of gastro and a pool closure.
We have lost the ability to be in the moment.
This job sux. Did you think it would be ace? Did you think that all it takes to be satisfied in a job was money and status? No. You actually need to have a passion for what you do to love it, an avid interest, or maybe just a really happy disposition.
When you get that pay rise, the one that will solve all your problems, you need another one because you spent that money just as fast as it came in.
We are forever looking forward but yet tomorrow never comes
We complain about people instead of celebrating them.
We talk about the bad weather, the awful crime, what is coming up next but we never get to know each other the way we could know each other.
There is not time to look at the good when we are always looking at the bad.
And so it goes on.
Until one day you decide that today is the day I will be happy.
That day is a good day.
That day is the day you decide that yes, all of this has not made me happy, and I get just one life.
One life to wake up and do the things I want to do.
Wake up and cuddle my children, because even though I have been complaining about them, I am so glad they are here in my home.
Wake up and look over at my husband and realise what an amazing man he is. For all that he does for us. To stop looking at all he is not.
To wake up and say that what I have now, in my closet, in my pantry, in my home, in my life, is enough. To be thankful for what is, instead of what isn’t.
One life to read those books on my shelf, one life to visit the places I want to see, one life to talk to people about the things I am passionate about, one life to change things.
One life to make today about me. To ask what it is that I need right now. To be happy.
