A story to tell……

Every picture tells a story. Every moment is a snapshot in time, whether it be good, bad or indifferent. Some days seem to go on forever and other days just fly by. There are just not enough hours in the day or the hours drag on FOREVER ! Some days you may wish you don’t want to have another. Other days you may eantcto live forever and there are the days inbetween where you feel blessed to have another day to start again.

Looking at other people’s days, lives, experiences may somehow have an impact on how you feel about your own life. Some people seem to have tragic, chaotic, lonely lives. Some have happy fulfilled and contented lives and the rest are somewhere inbetween.

But is life static? Will it ever change. Will the bad life ever turn good. Will the good life ever turn bad. Will this snapshot in time be a Happy or sad moment in time?

People experience many highs and lows all the time. It’s like a rollercoaster. It’s like a spectrum and we pass from one end to the other at different speeds and paces. How we react and respond is down to our personality, our resilience, our coping mechanisms.

How we interact with others allows us to laugh, cry, scream, shout, be quiet or silent. It allows us to look in the window of their life and their personality and their coping mechanisms and resillience and it allows them to see ours. It allows us to share, to learn, to walk away, to love, to sympathise and empathise, to advice and to listen, with our hearts and our ears.

We are not defined by experiences but we are shaped by them and we learn from them. We grow and develop from our mistakes and that gives us strength, even when it doesn’t feel that way.

It’s about recognising that this moment in time is just that, a moment, and whether happy, sad, difficult, easy or somewhere inbetween, it will inevitably change. For it to change, something has to happen, something has to be different. Whether it is us doing something different or something in our circumstances changing, making it different, it is up to us how we react and respond to it…… that is our choice and in making that choice we will be affected one way or another. It is ultimately our responsibilty to effect a change in order to be the happiest version of ourselves that we can be or hope to be.

We can chose this as many times as we like because for as long as we are living and breathing, we can chose which way we want to go. It may not be easy or it may be the simplest step you will ever take, but remember, all it takes is the first step.

I wrote a story about a time in my life, it was a snapshot of my life, a time during my teenage years, that for me, was very difficult due to circumstances beyond my control. I responded to it in the only way I could, by facing the challenges head on, by rebelling somewhat in order to stand up for myself and by planning my great escape to the life I really wanted, when the time was right.

Of course everyone has a story to tell and since my teenage years I’ve had plenty more challenges to face, as we all do. That is the key, face them, deal with them and move on from them.. keep moving forward, keep learning, keep growing, learn from the good and the bad. Accept that some things are just the way they are. Accept you can’t change everything but strive to be the best version of you that you can be.

Write your story, it doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad, if it’s written well or not, it only matters that it is your story, your snapshot, and it does not have to define you now or your future self …