There are certain choices we make in life that are painful, difficult, and often times, undesired. But our human limitations leads us to certain thresholds, at which point we realise that we are no longer able to endure the burden(s). Suicide, self-harm and reclusion is the coward’s way out. What takes real courage is walking away, reaching out for help, and fighting back.
The mind of time is hard to read.
We can never predict what it will bring.
Nor even from all that is already gone
Can we say what form it finally takes;
For time gathers its moments secretly.
Often we only know it’s time to change
When a force has built inside the heart
That leaves us uneasy as we are.
Perhaps the work we do has lost its soul
Orr the love where we once belonged
Calls nothing alive in us anymore.
We drift through this grey, increasing nowhere
Until we stand before a threshold we know
We have to cross to come alive once more.
May we have the courage to take the step
Into the unknown that beckons us;
Trust that a richer life awaits us there,
That we will lose nothing
But what has already died;
Feel the deeper knowing in us sure
Of all that is about to be born beyond
The pale frames where we stayed confined,
Not realizing how such vacant endurance
Was bleaching out our soul’s desire.
–For The Time of Necessary Decisions
by John O’Donohue
A new year is upon us, and with it, the challenge to walk away from the ghosts of the past we keep dragging around with us. If there is anything 2018 has taught me, it is to live in the present, and stop clinging to the ghosts who do nothing but haunt us. I have no photographs of my parents or former partner around the house, or on my websites. My archives abound with them, of course, but that is exactly what they are now – archives of closed chapters that meant to remain that way. Whatever beautiful memories I have of my parents lives within me, manifesting itself in my daily activities and the manner in which I make my choices in life. Their values and traditions (well, most of them), live within me and my daughter. The rest is unnecessary soul clutter that I have learned, with great difficulty, to walk away from.
What is done, is done.
Understand the past to live in the present at peace with yourself, allowing bygones to be truly bygones. Regrets will always be with us, but if we learn make the most of the time we have left, then we have learned the lesson.
FrogDiva Thoughts 