FIRST YOU FALL...THEN YOU FLY...

I am a firm believer of positive mindset. I believe we have to let go the memory of yesterday to live a peaceful today in order to have a happy tomorrow. I tell myself everyday how lucky I am to be alive and see all the beautiful things life has to offer. And I am so eager to unlock the mystery of what tomorrow holds for me.

Every now and then in life, we encounter obstacles. Some makes us tremble while some gives us strength and makes us a better person. But to live our life knowing that a happy tomorrow might never arrive is really a challenge.

Positive thinking is indeed something easy to preach. Every self-help book in the bookstore talks about the miracle of healing yourself. But these words of advice are coming from those people who have something to hold on to and to look forward upon. 

What happens if you don’t have a better tomorrow to look forward to? What if you know for certain, this life has nothing better to offer and you are to be in the exact spot as you are now for the rest of your life? How would you ever live your life knowing your future will be as cold as ice? Could anyone ever survive a live full of emotional misery?

Yes they can. I know a person who goes through this ordeal in a daily basis. She often unveils her scarred chest and shows me her broken heart. She speaks of her yesteryears where there were episodes of happiness, success, dream and hope. Then as she wakes up to her current state, tears rolls down her cheek and almost instantly I could feel her pain. But what hurts her the most is knowing there is a dead end in front of her. She is stuck. There is nothing she can do to change her life.

She is not a person who demands much. She is a simple woman who appreciates simple joy in life. But this simple woman has been denied happiness. She lives every moment of life as it comes. “I follow the flow,” that’s what she said with a smile.

As I sip my coffee, I could taste the bitterness in her smile. Having gone through something similar in life, I felt sad for her. No, not sad because she was miserable. I was sad because I realise the woman sitting in front of me is an amazing woman. She is full of warmth. She is kind and gentle to every single soul. She is a dedicated mother and a loving wife. I don’t understand why God is testing someone as beautiful as she?

As my mind was busy finding an answer, a song popped into my head:

“When I am down and, oh my soul, so weary;
When troubles come and my heart burdened be;
Then, I am still and wait here in the silence,
Until you come and sit awhile with me.

You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains;
You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas;
I am strong, when I am on your shoulders;
You raise me up: To more than I can be.”

And just like that, I found my answer. You see, sometimes in life, we run so fast that we don’t notice anyone running with us until we fall. Lying on the ground we feel we have no strength to get back up. So we force ourselves to keep crawling hoping to reach our destination. We could be far from being close to the finish line. And some of the hardest obstacles in life are still to come, but we can never give up. 

Throughout the rollercoaster of emotions we face in life, we might lose our self identity. We might no longer be the same person we were 10 or 20 years ago. But we are who we are. Remember, we need not be the person we once were – we can be the person we want to be. Yes, the past helps us become who we are today, but it also has no control over how the future unfolds unless you let it.

Too many of us live behind walls of our own design. We hide our pain to rule our lives. And it’s a shame. It’s a waste. And it leads to an unfulfilling, unmeaningful, hollow existence.  I think we can all choose whether or not we allow those walls to stay up, or if we want to break them down and put ourselves out there. You have the choice as to how to take it. Is it going to dictate the way you live your life, or are you going to take control of your own?

 

To my dear friend:
Life is what we make of it. If you have a hole in your heart, don’t let it bleed. Fill it up with the love you have for your own self. To love yourself means to accept yourself as you are and to come to terms with those aspects of yourself that you cannot change. It means to have self-respect and unconditional self-acceptance. We spend so much time waiting to be loved, hoping love will find us, searching, yearning for that special love. Feeling empty and lost without it, wanting someone to give us love and fill us up. Unfortunately, that’s not usually how life works. When you expect love from an external source, and someone or something does not fulfil your needs, all you get is a heartache. Loving yourself is the only dependable way to create love in your own life.

Remember my dear:

“...first, you jump off the cliff, and you build wings on the way down.”