Another year starts … another January passes … another resolution scuppered …
I’m left with a juxtaposition of sorts. Chastising myself for 2016’s first failure, then consoling myself that this is not so.  It’s not setting a precedent for an impending year of failures.

I actually started the writing of this post by google searching which blog page I used for my previous blogs. That’s surely not a good sign. I could use the excuse that my memory is horrific … well, this isn’t really an excuse, more of a medical fact which I will explain in another blog post. However, I must also accept it’s a sign of the length of time I have been blog-less, blog-dormant, blog-away … I realise there probably isn’t a technical term but I find amusement in short-handing such things. New years res take 2. 

Failure … A word triggered by any number of scenarios, one that is a reflection of our ability to perceive life’s misfortunes as either that or a life lesson. I like to think that I am in the camp of ‘every failure is another lesson of life’. Rarely does it feel like this in moments of darkness but I’ll always strive for the pursuit of happiness. What do you do?

(For those of you familiar with my previous blog posts you are probably thinking that this is rather a morose beginning. I can reassure, there is a happy ending).

Hope leads to failure. Expectations, love, ambitions, desire, beliefs, they all lead to failure …(I promise, there is light at the end of the tunnel) … Despite acknowledging this, the innate human spirit doesn’t admonish such emotions. Well, it may initially but it won’t forever. After all nothing is permanent, nothing lasts forever.  This is most obvious to me when I reflect on my grandparents approach to life. My Grandma, Granny and Grandad lived to a great ripe old age. Grandad superseding my Granny and Grandma’s respectable age of 89, at 97 and a half his perception and appreciation of life always inspired me. To this day it still does and will continue to. I take inspiration from all my family members, a topic I will discuss in another blog post.   Why wouldn’t I? They have all led different paths, learnt different lessons. It’s a human bookcase of priceless inspirational self-help books, one that is not always wholly appreciated for it’s true worth.

My grandparents always had a sense of hope. Maybe it stemmed from their experience in the war. Their hopeful wishes eventually answered when the war ended. Today we live with a different threat, a new form of terror where we don’t know when or where the next event will happen. Sure, political disturbances can be predicted and prepared for but the other type of terror is unprecedented and the brutality and disregard for life is something rarely experienced before. Of course, it is important to recognise people in other parts of the world have been living with this type of threat for years, some even decades. (However, the western media does not see the value in this. It doesn’t choose to share such stories. But we can, by looking outside the boxy world that the media creates). The punishment of others for an act they didn’t commit, the misguided beliefs of a religion which promotes the exact opposite of the intensions those groups are promoting. How would our grandparents and great grandparents see today’s threats? Would they still live in hope or would they savour each moment? Personally, I watched my grandparents savour every moment of life. It’s a quality I find fairly unique to their generation. They actually knew what it feels like to fear the end of the world. To live in a helpless war zone where your fate is at the hands of politicians. Many are still living this life.

So when aspects of life are not going the way you want, when a work project is stalled, when you feel your competitors are becoming more successful, when you feel you’re not achieving your goals, when you’re frustrated, when work and goals become all consuming, take a moment and ask yourself, am I still breathing, am I still living, can I still see, hear and feel the world around me. Do I have a roof over my head, an income, friends and family who support me in everything I do … If you can answer just one of these questions you are still alive. Don’t waste your life living in one dimension. Live outside the world which your mind sometimes creates and breath in the air around you. The air we all share. Life is a gift. Don’t leave it unwrapped. Open it and see what’s inside.