Because I don't have enough to do...
... I signed up for a thirty day writing challenge. It's called Trust 30, and I stumbled upon it through Ash Ambirge's entrepreneurial blog, TMF Project.
As she stated (and this is what hooked me- I think it was a goer even before I had a look at the site!):
It's a 30-day writing challenge that encourages you to look within and trust yourself, using it as an opportunity to reflect on your now, in order to create direction for your future.
For the month of June, there will be 30 prompts from 30 thought leaders, and participants are encouraged to tweet, blog or otherwise share their response to these prompts.
Now, given that there was a fair amount of sarcasm contained in the title of this post, I'm a bit behind. However, I do have my first effort, cheesy as it may be. You have been warned.
We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
You just discovered you have fifteen minutes to live.
1. Set a timer for fifteen minutes.
2. Write the story that has to be written.
Mostly I feel pride. Bright, primary-coloured pride, tempered around the edges with the sepia of nostalgia.
With not enough time to tell what needs to be told, to explore that which merits exploration, to resolve the questions left half-formed (much less answered), all that is left is to view the pieces of my life through a wide lens, take in as much as possible, look at the parts as a whole.
And mostly, I feel pride.
I have been a loyal, vocal, loving member of my family. I have admired people and told them so. I have savoured the implicit beauty in words and language, and on occasion I think I may have succeeded in alerting others to that same beauty. I have challenged myself. I have chased down my dreams and lived them, more than once. I have followed my heart. I have trusted my head. I have sought out knowledge. I have listened to people's stories and been inspired. I have ventured past the confines of my geographical location and discovered the world outside. I have paused. I have paid attention. I have relished my days.
In the movie The Bucket List, Morgan Freeman's character muses over the two questions upon which entry into Egyptian heaven is dependent.
Have you found joy in your life?
Has your life brought joy to others?
Yes, and yes. And that makes me proud.
The nostalgia? Well, I suppose that is borne of regret, not for mistakes made, rather for things left to do. Things done, unknowingly, for the last time, never to be repeated as I had childishly assumed. No-one is immortal, sadly.
The last look at lights twinkling on a Christmas tree.
The last caffe macchiato.
The last Sicilian breakfast of almond granita and brioche.
The last dance in the car with my cousins; bemused pedestrians looking on.
The last conversation with my father.
The last tears of laughter after a Rik Mayall impersonation by my brother.
The last spark of understanding in the eyes of a student.
The last Pinot with my best friend.
The last revelation of an undiscovered book.
The last cicadas filling the last summer twilight.
How strange to assume everything can be repeated. In fact nothing can- even the things we do without thought, every day, are one offs- small details always set them apart from the other times. And each of these actions, every single one, will one day be completed for the last time. Whether mundane or spectacular.
Moments are to be lived rather than rushed. Easier to realise when 'later' is boiled down to fifteen minutes.
With three minutes to go, I think of my Great Love. He changed the course of my life. I think back to the moment before I first saw him and he me, before nothing would be the same again. And then I feel gratitude, gratitude, gratitude.
I am grateful to fate and circumstance and to him and to myself, for we were thrown together in an improbable, impossible moment, and we took that moment and ran with it. I have had more joy in two years with him than in the entire thirty years preceding. He is the mirror through which I see myself more clearly.
I have loved my life, and all the people in it. I would do it all again. I am proud, and grateful, and so very blessed.
