It’s been a bit of a weird year all things considered. 2021 was going to be the year I got organised, and I did, just not in the way I ever anticipated. From an ADHD diagnosis to widowhood within the space of a few months, it forces you to re-evaluate the direction you thought your life was going in, shocking you forcefully into a clarity you never thought you possessed. Change barreling down on you like the massive stone boulder chasing Indy as he flees the temple in Raiders of the Lost Ark, only there’s no escape.
I regularly get asked if I’m okay, and yes I am in my own way. There’s nothing we can do to change the past so the only way is forward, and you may as well embrace every opportunity that appears. About a month after the bereavement I read a passage in one of John Berger’s books that summed up the attitude I needed to have.
You say something similar in one of your angry letters from prison. Self pity always made you angry and you were replying to a moaning letter from a friend. ‘To be a human being’, you say, ‘is the main thing above all else. And that means to be firm and clear and cheerful, yes, cheerful in spite of everything and anything, because howling is the business of the weak. To be a human being means to joyfully toss your entire life in the giant scales of fate if it must be so, and at the same time to rejoice in the brightness of every day and the beauty of every cloud.”
Confabulations, John Berger
To be cheerful in spite of everything…
Life goes on and each day brings a new chance to create something worthwhile, so rejoice in every experience that comes your way, because you never know how long you have left.
Sarah Lowes 