Trouble at sea…

In the depths of hearts we know who we are. In the depths of our minds we know what we want to be. So which wins… Who we are or who we want to be? But why should this be such a public decision? Why are there so many questions? Why do other people care so much? And why when we have so many troubles in our own lives do we try to trouble other peoples?

When people become involved in your life and start to wonder more about you, you cannot help but be defensive, especially if they sail into unchartered territory and especially if your trust for them is still wavering offshore. However, sometimes, these people appear on our radar for all the right reasons, because their questions come so sudden and our answers are so unprepared they cannot help but stir emotions and these emotions may just let you know the truth. Like a war at sea, the Navy can prepare and prepare for attacks, but they are only as good as their weakest link. This implies that if we practice enough we can fake our answers, but even if we lie we feel the truth come up so far that even if it doesn’t make it out of our mouths, it will sit on the tongue.

So what if what we say is what we want? Is it right to be wrong? You know it doesn’t actually matter! Because we have only one life, we have only a certain amount days, months and years here, so if you want to be something; go on ahead. Because there is nothing better than being true to yourself. If you want to be you then there is no law, no moral wrong, in fact nothing that is against that. If you feel there is something you need to keep back, then that’s your choice, your decision and your prerogative. Just don’t feel the pressure of people.

People are nosey, people get involved, and people enter conversations for all the wrong reasons. They want to come out of it with something to tell other people when there is nothing that is anything of theirs to tell. Not unless you make it so. Follow your heart and your mind, be who you are and who you want to be. Why do we have to choose? There is no need if we can have both and we can. Because in life money is our only limit, we have all the time in the world, all the courage in the world and we dream for the world. So show the world you.

We can dream of what we want to be or we can step up and take action, and only by doing something can we make ‘who we want to be’ ‘who we are.’ Then we have we won the battle, the mist will clear, the fog will climb, the smoke will deteriorate and the sun will rise. The sails are up and the wind is blowing; advance.

Who you are is who You are.

Are we three or free?

William Wordsworth once wrote that ‘life is divided into three terms – that which was, which is and which will be.’ Three is such a hard number to predict, for the mathematicians who took years to understand the triangle, for the historians who are still trying to understand the pyramids and for astronomers who rely on the fallacy of three so much to understand the future. Whether it’s seeing three people you know on the way to work, the three drains that you can’t walk on or the group of three friends we’re a part of, we experience this difficult number daily and can’t escape it. But is a bad thing or good? In life, love and London is three a crowd?

For some of us we’ve always been stuck in the curse of three friends; the friendship triangle. It seems like an equilibrium that you can’t just escape. When you’re young, it doesn’t hurt so much, but when we grow up it’s constantly on our minds; like the white noise we can’t escape, the pain we can’t get rid of. We all have the concept of three in our lives; there are always two more people around us, two more people thinking about us, two more people on our side. But the friendship triangle is never an easy ride, for we slide in and out of each others triangles moving from one to the next in our lifetime, we may stay permanent in friendships for a long time, or move on with a speedy turnover. Maybe that’s the easy way out of the difficulty, to move through friendships at speed. But what if we can’t, or at least don’t want to move on. When its finally time for you to move triangles, the rust will make a tough ride to let go, so is it worth the ride for the fall? And where do we go, do we have to find the new triangle, do we get ‘recruited’ or is it an automated process?

The pain comes in threes also, first comes the fear, the wondering and the consumption of energy on worry and contemplation, second comes the tears, the loose and hurt, the floods and the feelings, the seething and shattered glass. Finally comes the emptiness, the hole in your gut, the space in your heart, the need to move on with the persistence to stay put.

Naturally, we all move on, we cannot all stay in the same place, be motivated by the same things and feel the same passions for everything. We all have our own lives to lead and cannot buckle on to someone else’s because if we do, when they shake us off the fall could be a long way down. So we have to let go sometimes even if letting go is the hardest thing to do, because right around the corner I promise something good is coming. And the pain will only hurt as long as you let it.

Three is a difficult number, emotional, periodical and painful. But three can also be the best times of your life. Three isn’t out to get you, it is just a cycle that has to happen, and through the experiences and rust we learn who we are. And who we are is the best knowledge of all, because then we know in our heart of hearts that what we was, that what is and that what we will be.

Inspire yourself

The changing of the seasons...

When the leaves shine through for the first time since October and the sun stays with us for longer and longer the time of new beginnings has arrived. The time of new life is upon us, the plants grow gently and sway in the light breeze the sky emits a lighter blue and in general the mood is light and airy, no cloudiness, no storms and no troubles. Yes, the spring brings new life in us all. However it seems this new life by the winter will deteriorate, expire and fall from the tree. We seem to change our moods like the seasons, but is it the moods we are changing? The leaf that grows back on the tree; is it a completely new person or just another new start? In life when we move on do we change who we are, or what we are?

There are times when we look at ourselves in the mirror and believe that we don’t even know who we are any more. The person who stares back at us has become something they never thought possible. We wonder have we lost our identity, have we changed for the worse, are our friends who our friends actually are? If we feel guilty then there probably is something wrong, someone we’ve hurt, someone we’ve lost on our way. What we really need is the changing of the seasons to lighten the mood. What we need is Spring.

We need it because it brings with it a new beginning to change us, to help us realise again who we are. But who are we? For scientist this is genetic, for priests its religious views, for Doctors it’s our health. And none of these are material things. So why do we judge so much on looks and styles? Is it because to ourselves, who we are is what we look like? No, honestly I’m not sure why we judge on looks, maybe it’s something we do to feel powerful and better about ourselves, and sometimes jealousy. But look into a mirror to find yourself and you don’t look at your clothes, you weren’t born a person with clothes so why would you. No, to find yourself you look into your eyes, deep into the windows of your mind to find out where you belong and what you believe, you do this because maybe, just maybe what we believe and ultimately who we are is pre-written for us in our genes, in our hearts and minds. And any attempt to change that will jus bring us back to where we belong because we know deep down that its wrong. I believe there is no way to recreate ourselves and end up happy, take Michael Jackson, he changed so much, but is he truly happy? That’s why change is so hard, because you have to like the change to accept it, and if you don’t then ultimately it may not be worth it at all.

So yes, we all follow the seasons with our moods. The summer brings the relaxation and the fun, the autumn brings the wind down and often the goodbyes, the winter brings the illnesses and the depression and spring like the cycle of water, like the bus route, it comes round again and brings us to the place we always want to be and be the person we always wanted to be, where the dreams have no limits, the future has no end, and the canvas though stained from the previous year, is clear enough to fill once more.

Happy Easter!

Pride and Prejudice.

While it’s true that we are all alone in this life, that we walk with one pair of feet and that our heart beats as one inside our chest, we cannot sometimes help loving someone for walking with their feet beside our own and for their heart beating in unison to the rhythm of ours. But finding that heart is a difficult process. First do we let our heart open so widely as to attract the wrong people and let it be hurt so fast? Or do we shut it and risk never letting people know while we watch them fade away; hurting us all the same? And second what are our circumstances? Are we ready? And if so will our lives let us have a relationship take it over? In the movies we always find that people drop their plans or journeys for the one they love. Isn’t it always the case that we have to lose something to gain a relationship? Isn’t it always the case that when we have a pocket full of sunshine our hands are always tied?

As I sit and watch peoples lives fall apart around me, I noticed what I have is so special and wonder why I deserve this joy, while just a couple of posts ago I was hurting inside and wondering what did I do to deserve this pain? It’s amazing what a little social life can do and also how seeing the truth can benefit all of us. You begin to notice the people who you thought were friends that you found out had other agendas and people who you once thought had other agendas become very good friends. But people come into your life for a reason and normally the bad people who enter your life give you an added little extra that they don’t know they’re giving you and you don’t know you’re receiving it until it hits you, and in my case hits you on the lips. When I met that ‘little extra’ I found I wasn’t that intrigued at all. But then when I found my feet in our friendship I took it a step further, you could say I developed an agenda but one to benefit us both. Our hearts began beating in sync.

I’ve never let my heart open as much as it has recently. Maybe there are people out there with the key to your heart or maybe just the confidence and the knowledge that you are wanted, that someone feels a closeness and need for you boosts your confidence and your aura to develop this newer you. People say you know when you’re in love, but I know this is not love, nor has anything before this been love, but this is a change from an introvert to an extrovert, this is just development, movement, a change of the winds. Change is hard to deal with, but what if the change is a good change? Normally when change is bad it affects you directly, but when change is good it boosts you and depletes others, they may resent you for it, even argue with you about it, but then change is bad for you again. Right? But why should feel bad for feeling good?

Love is something I can’t write about, because I don’t want to judge books by their covers. For I was once a book with an abnormal cover compared to those I was next to. But when someone comes along and finds a great novel behind that cover the others start to change, you become a bestseller and you find that while all the others have to put up with change hurting them, you are the same book you always were with the same cover and you are still selling out. So the reason we can’t grab our pocket full of sunshine is because we’re always putting up with change, so the be the person you are, excel in the places your heart believes in and understand yourself because then come rain or shine the sun is yours. Just don't punish the others books on the shelf with your success because they are holding you upright and the fall is along way down. And as for the movies, the books are always better anyway!

Be true to yourself.

Didn't we almost have it all?

In such a material world where women love their shoes and men their technology and while we spend, spend, spend; do we ever pause to think that maybe we’ve got enough? There are after all people out there barely surviving on a day-to-day basis. When we buy something new, something expensive we immediately feel guilty, a part of us feels empty, as does our bank account. So if we feel this doubt and ever so slight unhappiness have we overstepped the mark? In life is it possible to have it all and more?

For all of us merely surviving is not enough and like everyone around us when we move up the ladder we comfort to it and it becomes not enough. But what if we try to jump the ladder too fast? When we move fast paced everything becomes blurry and we may lose that what we dearly possess while we’re lost in the moment. It isn’t until we stop to pause that we notice what we’ve dropped, and then we have to move backwards in our steps. Is this what we’re all doing? By buying ourselves out of our league do we believe that it will bring us the happiness of a superior league and yet realise when we get there we’ve left that happiness behind?

What is having it all? Is there a general limit or is it personalised? Is it an amount in money and assets? Does it measure friendships? I believe that it is none of these things, because in life you can never have it all because yesterdays ‘All’ is different from today’s. What if one day you were a singer in a bar dreaming of the top, and the next you were talent spotted and had a multi million pound contract. Would you’re expectations be the same? In short, no. Because having it all is somewhere above where we are, but it will always stay above where we are.

Whitney Houston once asked ‘Didn’t we almost have it all?’ There are times when it feels so close that in our minds we really do have it all. But there is always room for improvement. Right? Whitney concludes that ‘you’ll never love that way again’ so is there a peak when you can get close and never get that close again? I think so because we can’t go on chasing all the time, we do give up once we do our best, there are comebacks but when do they ever last? So when you get close, give it your all because if the ‘ride’ is good enough it’ll be ‘worth the fall.’

‘All’ is a very broad term, it cannot be distinguished in real terms but we know deep inside when we’re close, the inner sense of happiness, the warmth, a smile, a laugh and whole load of good memories. But when we feel the doubt we felt in the beginning, it’s not us having all and more; it’s the loss of something we had on the way. But it all can phase out like the seasons, like the spring it’s a time to ascend, like the summer a time to shine and for the rest I wish you… ‘All’ the best!

Why are we so scared of recession?

We all invest our heart in different stock; friendship, love and dreams. We live in hope that it will grow and grow. But in reality what goes up must come down. In economics this is known as a recession, a downturn in the economy, a fierce environment for making money. What if we modelled life as an economy? They say sometimes in order to grow in the long term a recession isn’t that bad at all. It’s always going to happen so staving it off may worsen its damage and the period before a recession is known as a slowdown so won’t prolonging this downward spiral make it seem all the worse? We have to wonder in our lives can a recession help us grow?

There are people paid tens of thousands, possibly hundreds, to assess risks in investments but only an individual can evaluate his/her own risk and even then we can’t get all the facts. Make a risky investment of the heart like releasing your trust to someone else’s may or may not pay off. Will it make us profit and boost our stock or will it make a dramatic loss and set us off down the river with speedy currents into the path of a waterfall. But we all see red sometimes. In the recession we can’t think clearly, problems build and build and our mind runs round in circles while our value depreciates by the second. It is said that the government can get a country out of a recession by making investment. So is any investment wise? The truth is even if we got the smoothest outcome from our investment there will always be some small hiccup because things are always too good to be true. In financial terms, if we left our money in the bank and didn’t invest a penny we’d earn interest, but if we risked a little here and a little there then we may make profits on a scale that will send our balance soaring. And then you ask… Can I risk missing out?

Happiness is immaterial and…No… money cannot bring happiness, at least not in the long term because we adjust to money, you may get a pay rise but 6 months to a year down the line you will be complaining about it because as our tastes change so does our balance. But what if you earned a lot more happiness; will it eventually make you unhappy?

When we escape a recession because an investment finally pays off what changes? Is it a lighter mood, a change of appearance, or is it just the opportunity to start building your economy somewhere else all over again and leave the dead wood behind? What we do know is that when its all over, said and done we can reflect in a much cleaner mirror, we can see clearly the mistakes behind us and learn that in the future stock is a volatile thing.

If we learn from our mistakes then we have done something special, something that proves our point. We have received a life experience; been educated and can go forward into tomorrow without resenting yesterday, after all research shows that education gains a better wage. So from our recession no matter how big or small we find our stock begins to increase and we release a dividend from our heart to our mouths and smile.

Have a great day!

Starting the journey…

Recently the winter blues kicked me hard and I wondered about life, its purposes, its problems and ultimately its pressures. I considered the future, the past and what might have been the present if the past had changed. It led me to believe that life is journey full of turnings and diversions. A journey with traffic lights that stop you just when you thought you were getting somewhere, a red line along the side so you can never stop and get away just when you need to. And when you do something wrong you know you’ll never escape it, because one day soon the fine will come through the post and you’ll have to deal with it then at a larger cost than what not doing wrong would cost.

Yes… life is a journey and each journey different even if the destination is the same. Some go the fast route, some the slow. Some take the scenic route, some the back roads. And some don’t make it all the way. You see, it is way too difficult to simplify life and very simple to make life difficult. But our dream, our passion we can define as the one thing we want that in reality is difficult to have and in our minds much easier and much softer to attain. We all have a dream, a place we want to be, a career we want to acquire or maybe its just a person we want to love us back.

For me, my life, my dream, my journey feels rough and yet I’ve only just set off. I’m heading along a route with two destinations hoping to get a sign from someone to tell me which one to choose. Or otherwise, when I get to the crossroad I’m going to face a tough decision all on my own. But the road is rough for another reason; possibly this one more so but I don’t like to admit it. Friends, reputations and judgmental pressures cause us to be someone we’re not, and that can pain us more than anything. But what about if you’re judged as something you’re not and you start to wonder what if I am? Have you really lost your way? Once in a while we need to grab a map and set us back on track. Remind ourselves who we are.

The point is we don’t know exactly where we’re going, we don’t know how long it will take and we’re not too sure we’ll make it all the way. But we do know that the road is long and winding, the journey is often bumpy and when (and if) we arrive, it will all be worth it. The pains, the pressures and worries will all be over, and we can say… I wouldn’t change it for the world.

Welcome to my map.