All in

When we want to, we can achieve great things.

I mean life-changing things – for us and others.

Of course, we're not superhuman or robots and it's understandable why we're not always inclined or inspired to act this way. In fact, just as often we'd rather live a nice quiet life.

Don't ask me why – perhaps it's my continued rumination on death and dying – but at the moment I'm drawn to consider those people who have done great things in the arts or otherwise but have died young. I was going to say well before their time, but as someone bordering on the edge of fatalism, when our time's up, our time is up!

I'm not suggesting we lose ourselves under the staggering weight of expectation but I do think it worth allowing the thought to hang in the air when we achieved our greatest things and invite the question: "Why or how?"

Anyhow, back to the coalface.

Have a good one.

Blessings, Julian

Everything changes

 “Experience life in all possible ways --
good-bad, bitter-sweet, dark-light,
summer-winter. Experience all the dualities.
Don't be afraid of experience, because
the more experience you have, the more
mature you become.” ― Osho

Life is replete with great joy but also sadness. Sadly, in our competency-addicted culture, we think it (sadness) something to get through, to be on the other side of; and then (not for everyone) it appears to give them bragging rights.

What if instead we practised sadness or grief or brokenheartedness?

I know what you're thinking. Here we go again, another faux branding exercise around the human experience.

Possibly, but for me, as I look back on my life, I realise how much I've stuffed down or skimmed in the hope of never having to face myself and my demons. And it did me no good. No good I say. No, all it did it was make me weary in not understanding why all the thrashing and expectation of things working out, lead to a slightly hollowed out life.

And now?

It's not so much I've turned a corner but being wrecked on schedule isn't something to be shunned or got through in double-quick time, but to pause, reflect and invite a more beautiful question into my heart:

How can I be more human?

Just to be clear, there's nothing to fix, to sort or make better. 

There's just life and death. 

And that excites me in equal measure.

Blessings, 
Julian

It's in my bones

“I had drunk so deeply of grief and innocently gambled so hard with fate and irony that a special kind of vision was gathering in my eyes, not entirely clear just yet. This was the same look people saw in your eyes when you have died for beauty and come to live accepting nature as life with no promise of paradise, and mad at people who couldn't see that.”
― Martin Prechtel, Secrets of the Talking Jaguar

Grief.

Right there.

I can't escape it -- now, not ever.

And you?

We think of it as feeling: "I lost my mother/father/friend."

It sits behind everything we think and do -- for a while at least.

But what if grief was something more profound?

Like...?

Being a faithful witness to everything that our loved one stood for and represented to us and their community.

Better still, our practised grief was celebratory in its purview -- something that we forever demonstrated in our words, deeds and life.

Right now, I'm wrestling with all those people who I once knew and those I didn't but I know are part of the wider family circle. I can feel them in my bones; and they're not gone. Far from it.

Love,

Julian

The end.

 

Death -- our death -- should inform our lives, but it rarely does.

It all comes too late.

But imagine it: being told the precise day you'd leave this world.

Would it change the way you saw your life and lived it?

Who knows? 

Right now, gripped as I am by the memories of my ancestors, I feel an overwhelming sense to sit with the knowledge, the absolutely certainty that I've got limited time available to me. And that doesn't mean, as I did previously, I want to run scared. Instead, I've a celebratory feeling in and around death. That's not dark, nor morose. It's life -- all of it.

And you?

Do you think about the end?

Perhaps not. It's too soon. But one day you and others will have to comprehend what it means to be gone. 

I find that more a little sobering, but in the meantime I'll keep leaning into my mortality to explore how my life should and must change to recognise the finality of this gift we call life.

Love,

Julian

Photo by Osman Rana on Unsplash