"for the first time" is the title to my latest can't possibly live without piece of music... sung by "The Script" from the UK... link is at the bottom of my post... I had listened to the lyrics many times before... but today the words hit my brain... maybe it was the continuous loop on my iPod but they sank in today... I started feeling the words and letting them flow into my life and all my experiences... he sings about his girlfriend but I let the words drift to encompass myself and I...
maybe it's the approaching 44th birthday that has me waxing philosophical but I find myself looking at who is looking back at me in the mirror and it sometimes feels that we are meeting for the first time...
who is this dude with the increasingly grey hair looking back at me... I know he is a good guy, but could he have been more, given more, loved better, been more patient...
not been so damned scared of everything...
how have all my experiences been engraved onto the face I see... this person I present to this world, friends and family...
I am at that age where I remember my parents and the more "mature" people in my world starting to leave us... more funerals than weddings, seeing their pain as they moved their loved ones into care or into hospice for their final days... all the broken hearts and all the "jack" drunk alone in the local bar... all the smiling but at the same time close to tears... all those ripples under the surface that we all smooth over so as not to be "that person" who is always in the shit... never has anything together... the one we all avoid....
I'm not giving up, not by a long shot, I just really wonder do we really ever know that we made a real difference to this place, the people we know, this great, colourful mural of humanity... do our brushstrokes even count... are we even supposed to know?
I look around my life and it is a good one, I have few regrets, but have at the same time, never truly "had it all"... or maybe I have, but just used the wrong scale to judge... always seem to have had employment that I loved, and when it wasn't great anymore, had the strength to walk away and allow a new door to open, family is good, those I have chosen to call "family" have my back, and I theirs... but the great love of my life eludes me, and maybe that is my lot in life... I am loved, that much I know down to my core, but I have never been able to hold on to a significant other... never found quite the right balance between holding on and letting go I guess... maybe that's my lesson this go round... that and patience... not good at either...
So I put it out there, look around and look deep, look at those eyes in the mirror and all the secrets and fears, love and tears, laughter and joy...
what would you say to that face if you were to meet it again for the first time...
maybe take it further, honour who you see, love who you see, respect who you see, cherish and comfort who you see looking back at you.. .
for some of us doing that, will truly be the feeling that you're meeting ... for the first time...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPEBN2dVNUY
I love this post!. I guess Im lucky because I at 22 am asking myself the questions that u are when u look at urself at almost 44.
ReplyDeleteIf i were to say anything to u in reply to this post, it wud be this :
I have looked at myself more thoroughly in the past year, than i perhaps have my whole life up till this point.
I admit I am only 22 and still have a lot to learn (with uni out of the way, I am now flat broke and struggling to find work etc etc) but among all of the "if life has taught me one thing(s)" I have gathered throughout, this one is definitely for u
If life has taught me one thing it is this "the joy in the difference that u make does not come from seeing it necessarily, it is instead, simply in being it (the difference)...for its own sake"
It is in knowing that u are being the best version of urself possible ...for urself. If that is ur goal and that is ur reason, the difference that u make for urself and others will be clearer than anything u have ever seen and u will see it...even with ur eyes closed.
This i promise u :)
I love your work. Keep it up