Wednesday, July 19, 2017

On Respecting Reality And Moving Forward

As anyone who has ever suddenly lost a loved one will tell you, there's a great deal of processing to be had to comprehend what's happened.

Having just come back from a hiking trip with my father in Italy's breathtaking Dolomites (we'd booked long before my mother's death and yes, that's a photo from our trip up above), and having had now 5 weeks to try to wrap my head around what seems still at times an impossibility, I'm feeling like it's time to get back at things.

Not sure I'll be fully up to speed for a while, but I'm at the point where I feel that I have enough mental real-estate to start writing again.

I didn't before. Our realities often precludes our best intentions, and it's important to respect that.

My newly darker reality before was such that my best efforts in life excluded all sorts of behaviours. From more regular exercising, to healthier eating, to more moderated drinking, to being more engaged with my loved ones, to writing this blog, and to so much more.

Spending time kicking yourself because you've fallen down will not likely accelerate your ability to get back up, and no doubt life ensures that at times, we all fall down.

The most important question to ask yourself when life isn't going according to plan or when your deck of cards is ugly is, "what can I do today that will help even a little"?

Truthfully, some days the answer may be little to nothing at all.

One day though, there'll be something more formative to do. And today (well yesterday really), mine was to type this out.

Our best efforts in life are dynamic, but that doesn't mean that they're not our bests, and the fact that our bests during difficult times might not be all that impressive when measured against our bests during easy times, doesn't make them any less worthy of pride.