They say ignorance is bliss and, quite often, I’m inclined to agree.
Last Friday, we had the misfortune of attending the funeral of the baby boy of a very close friend of ours. He lived a matter of hours and the beautiful, emotional service proved – if there were ever any doubt – that there is little in life more powerfully heart-wrenching than the sight of a coffin that can be carried by one person.
I’ve been mulling over a lot of the things I want to do in 2012 since I posted my list of goals. The question is, was the list enough?
That list represents the essence of everything I want to do over the next 12 months, the things I want to focus my life on and what I think will bring me the most happiness and fulfilment throughout the year. But is striving for “more” of something too generic an aim? Should I have more specific, more focussed goals?
You would have thought after all these years, including two-and-a-half on the waiting list for my transplant, that I was used to the little bumps in the road that we all come across.
Turns out I’m not.
Sometime even the smallest challenges can seem like marathons, the merest bump the greatest mountains.
Other time things seem to fade into the background as something far more significant comes to the fore.
Tor’s transplant on Monday night has thrown many things into sharp focus for me.
Remembering the immense fight she now faces, knowing the risks and rewards at play and reliving what it felt like to be in her position has really driven home the relative significance of everything else in life.
If there’s ever a time when we can take stock, refocus and understand the things that are most important to us, it’s when the life of a loved one hangs in the balance.
Don’t just let these moments pass you by: use them to understand your life and your thoughts and to take definitive action, whatever it may be, towards making your life a little more how you want it and a little less how you’re being lead.
Monday was a day of emotions like no other.
On the one hand, my friend and ally in many things, Tor, finally received the life-saving transplant she’s been waiting over 4 years for. She can finally stop waiting and start the long journey into her new life.
No sooner had the emotions begun to settle than I heard that my friend and inspiration to many, Rachael, was preparing her final goodbyes, having been told by the doctor that there is nothing more they can do.
Tor always staggered me with her courage, fortitude and stubborn refusal to let CF beat her, reminding me in so many ways of the wonderful Jess, who we lost just days after her long-awaited transplant last year. Tor has fought and battled and grappled with everything life has chosen to fling at her over the last four years – and throughout her life before that – and faced it with a characteristic smile, passion and commitment to not letting it get in the way.
Rachy has inspired many people, often first to lend support to people going through their own tough times, even as her transplant turned against her and her lungs deteriorated just 3 months after being given her second chance. Always open, honest and available to all her friends, she humbles us all with her humility and love.
Rachy is all the more remarkable for having posted on her blog on Sunday a simple picture and the words
Rachael Wakefield, a life lived surrounded by love, with my second chance of life time is now precious, I’d like to thank all and everyone for your continued support, love to you all xxx Rachy xxx
Her quiet dignity in saying her goodbyes and inviting those of her friends and followers has seen her Facebook page deluged with outpourings of love and grief filled with the same passionate fervour as Tor’s has been with messages of excitement and prayers of hope.
What’s made this week so hard is that both of these women are at once utterly, beautifully unique, yet sadly not alone.
Every day we lose 3 people waiting for transplants in this country, mostly for the simple reason that not enough organs are available for transplant. If you haven’t already, you need to sign the organ donor register now.
It’s depressingly simple – taking less than 2 minutes and but a few clicks – but far too few people have done it. No one like Tor should have to wait 4 years to be given a second chance at life.
Although we all know the risks going in to transplant, and although many of us have watched Rachy’s progress with a “There but for the grace of God go I” viewpoint, I know Rachy wouldn’t have traded a second of the post-transplant life had she known what lay in store.
I’ve always said I wanted six months of a better life post-transplant and I’d be happy. That a chance to play football with my Godsons, to run around in the garden, to do something without calculating how much oxygen I’d need to take would be enough for me.
I’ve been blessed with almost 4 years of new life and I thank my donor and their family for it every day. And I’m saddened every day for those who have never had the chance Rachael, or Tor, or I have had.
Don’t let life pass you by. Take it, seize it, make the very most of it. And please, once your done, pass your organs on.
When I used to work as a workshop assistant and, later, as part of several different Youth Theatre companies around my home town, I remember thinking that adults really ought to spend more time learning from children.
The amazing thing about children is the way they prioritise their lives. To a four-year-old child the thing that matters more than anything else in the world is whatever they happen to be doing at any given moment.
Their play isn’t hampered by when they have to stop and go home. The tears that come when told they have to leave come and go in a matter of minutes. The time they spend with a parent is all-encompassing, as is the time they spend with their friends, siblings and others.
We all work busily on different ways to prioristise our days, to keep ahead of the curve and up-to-date on everything that’s going on around us, but maybe we should be more like children.
Instead of constantly worrying about what’s coming next, perhaps we should put more effort into being truly mindful of one thing at a time.
Try it yourself, see how much richer it makes your life and work.
Stop writing an email with Twitter open.
Stop pausing while you review documents to read the updates in your Facebook feed.
Stop thinking about what you need to do next or when you have to be up in the morning while you’re relaxing and cuddling on the sofa with your loved one(s).
Be present, be focussed and be four years old again. It’s remarkable when you make the effort.
I’m always on the lookout for new things. I love learning, growing and expand my horizons.
I have a fairly hefty collection of feeds in my RSS reader and I was noticing more and more of them talking about Leo Babuta and his ZenHabits website, so I figured I should check it out.
When you read something that turns your thinking around and helps create a new way of doing things in your life, it’s tempting to over-egg the proverbial custard by calling it ‘life-changing’. But, in a way, that’s exactly what ZenHabits has been.
I’ve always thought of zen as being more of the kind of eastern mumbo-jumbo that helps martial artists to focus and that many westerners scoff at, a bit like karma1. But zen is at once so much more than that, but so much simpler.
Zen is not some mysterious order of blokes in funny outfits telling everyone to be like them. Instead, it’s just more of a simple way to be aware of what’s going around you and to keep things on an even-keel.
I’m a stress-head by nature. I thrive on stress, but it also, well, stresses me out. I inherited a very short temper from my dad, something for which I’m not proud, but always figured I’d just have to live with. But even in the short space of time I’ve been following the zen ideas, I’ve been able to stay calmer, more collected and immediately more productive.
Zen isn’t for everyone. It’s not a cure-all and there is no ‘zen switch’ that you can press to suddenly feel calmer. To truly embrace zen you have to believe in what it can do and invest yourself in it. Only then will you see the benefits of living a zen life.
I’m in the very early stages of developing my zen life, but I can already see the benefits and I’m loving it.
Have you ever tried zen? How did you find it changed you as you learned and adapted along with it?
When I first started blogging, back in the dusty days of 2006, I began with a Statement of Intent. At the time, it was designed to remind me of the reasons I started the blog in the first place as well as letting people know what they could expect from me and it.
Over the years my blogs have changed faces many times, but this new facelift is something more. The simplified design and stripped-down visuals serve to remind me of the meandering thoughts and intentions that I let take over here and to keep me sharply, intensely focussed on what this blog is becoming.
You’ll notice the old name, SmileThroughIt1, is back because rack my brains as I may, I couldn’t think of a better way to sum up the purpose of this site or the ideas I live by.
What is SmileThroughIt? Put simply, it’s a philosophy of life that helped carry me through some of my toughest times. While waiting for my transplant, not knowing if it would come in time, I learned to focus on the good things in life. More than that, I learned that if I could find just one thing every day that made me smile, that day had been worth it.
This site is here to help me make the most of the second chance I’ve been given and if, through that, I can help, inspire or motivate other people, so much the better.
Before the lengthy break in updates, I’d started blogging to please others, to write what I thought people wanted, to ‘optimise’ my posts. But looking back over my archives, both on here and the original site’s archives, I saw that my best writing and the most effective posts came not from targeting an “audience”, but rather writing something for myself.
Although I hate to admit it, it’s not just my blog that has been through many twists and turns and a distinct loss of focus. Everything that’s happened in this blog has been mirrored in my day-to-day life and it bothers me that I feel like I’m letting this second chance slip past me without grasping every second.
This blog will reflect my change in mood, attitude and approach to my second chance at life and, hopefully, will help guide others through similar changes in their own life.
This story has no planned ending, no final goal, no means by which to measure its success or failure. This blog, like all of us, just is. And what it is comes from what’s inside and the people who read, contribute and support its aims, ideals and author (that’s me) along the steps of its journey.
Come along for the ride.
Do you really “gotta fake it ’til you make it”?
The truth is, when you put on the façade of confidence to give yourself a boost, you’re not actually faking it at all – you’re accessing your inner confidence and bringing it to the front.
Everyone has confidence. Each of us have something in our lives – even if it’s just one, tiny thing – that we know in our heart of hearts we’re good at. Something that gives us that often-elusive state of flow whenever we are engaged in it.
The process of faking it is, in fact, a process of accessing our inner confidence through physical and emotional triggers that put our minds and bodies into the feeling of that flow state.
The next time you’re finding yourself in a situation where you’re trying to posture yourself into a major confidence boost, remember: you are not faking it, you’re simply accessing and living your inner confidence. Where that confidence takes you is entirely up to you.
Thanks to the great Chris Richards for helping me realise all of this.
A large part of our lives is taken up looking for new and exciting things to do; peering into the future to see what we could be doing six months, a year, five years from now.
I see things differently. Perhaps because of the perspective two-and-a-half years on the transplant list gave me – knowing little else from sitting, getting worse and waiting for (a) death or (b) a second chance – I don’t see the point in looking that far into the future. Six months is about my limit.
Even now, my fiancée is being incredibly patient as we try to plan our wedding for July 2012. I’m just about grasping it, but it’s a long way off.
I prefer to live a life that focuses not necessarily on the cliché-heavy ‘here-and-now’, but rather on the soon-to-be. Not focusing on what I dream of down the line, but on the actions – however small – I can take now to take a step closer to those dreams.
As I move forward in my own, personal brave new world, I’m already committing to things, exploring things and taking action to make them happen.
If your life is full of things you’d love to do ‘some day’, be they personal, professional or otherwise, now is the time to take the next step, the next action and set the wheels in motion for whatever it is you most want to pursue.
Just because it’s not laid on a plate, doesn’t mean it’s not there for the taking.