Something every MAN should hear!

Life...

"To this day" by Shane Koyczan

Stumbled across this video and i personally found it to be profound. So take the 12 or so minutes to really listen to what he says.

Things i wish i knew back THEN!

My niece is entering her teen phase and she asked me a very interesting question recently about things i wish i knew when i was a teen. This made me sit and ponder on lessons learnt from that very testing time when i was a little miss know it all.

I wished someone had informed me:

That i can do or be anything - That there wasn't limitations set by the world for my dreams as long as i worked hard. Oh and that 9-5 was overrated if i got stuck in something that i wasn't passionate about and that didn't get me excited.

The choice is always yours - Life doesn't randomly happen, in the end we choose what and who you keep in it.  In the end you need to take responsibility for your choices, the earlier to start the sooner you will see different perspectives.

Be different - Conforming to the norm is boring, don't try to be who you are not. Be the original you, not a carbon copy of someone else. So many young people try to be other people and in the process loose themselves to the ills of the world.

Never hand over your power or take things too personally  - If you hand it over now chances are you will go through your entire life doing it too. Walk away from the arguments that you don't see fit to be in and fight for the ones you believe passionately in.

Have faith and start believing while you young - The older you get the more you realise God is actually very real and that if you believed a little more in His plan and a little less in your wants, things may have turned out pretty different.

In the end i think life teaches you what you need to know on the journey!

Some truth...

TRUE...

What matters.....

As long as i keep being me, as long as i keep being true to myself and who i am it does not matter how many jobs i get or don't get. It does not matter how many times i change direction on this journey called life.

None of it matters.

What matters is that i am living in my truth, and the people who need me will find me. And i will find the people i need. Whether it takes a week, a year or 2/3 if its written it will be.

I some how know that I will find the answers I need.
But more importantly, i will find the Questions.

(Thank you Jennifer Pastiloff for the reminder)

Taking Time

Time i Say 

I am a big believer in reflecting on life and taking time out from the hustle and bustle of it. I must admit I don't often get the time or have the energy to sit for hours just pondering on life but this morning i woke up before the crack of dawn with some thoughts/ truths to share.

I feel like life is short for most of us and the more we put off, the more we won't be able to do. It definitely does not work like a to do list that you can tick off and move on to the next task or fork in the road. Life is unpredictable, it so not a romance novel or a TV series where the "good one" somehow always win. It has moments of heart wrenching sadness and exhilarating happiness all wrapped up in lessons that we try to learn from.

Life can get messy and sometimes lonely even when you are surrounded by hundreds of people. It can also be filled with exasperating adventures and "chapters" waiting to be explored.

I realize that in this life if you are everything to everyone, you may end up being nothing to yourself.

So take the time to find your joys and embrace it, whether its climbing a mountain or sitting on a park bench with a good book. Take time to do it, share it with someone special.

Take time to live for the moments of right now, cause tomorrow or next week might not come.

Writing my BOOK

I love to read, I can literally spend hours in the thrills of a good novel and completely cut the world out so that the characters and I can embark on a journey together. I have a very visual imagination so I often find that it would put it into pictures hence I am not picky about endings as long as at the end I can feel like “I got it”, like I understood the plot.

Little Me

Lately I have been thinking of life (my own) as a book; with all its chapters culminating various stages, highlights and lowlights of my 27 years on this planet. Granted this is not as long as most, but I sure have learnt a thing or two.

It would have to starting with my first fond memories of garden tea parties when I was 4, through to my peculiar child hood where I have always had an opinion and a mother who would listen to my every entertaining word – when I was 7/8 I refused to go to bed at bedtime because I felt that my brain didn’t need all the hours of sleep and I would become so animated in my theory that my parents would just let me stay up.

Through my odd days as a teenager, I was not a difficult teen  but I was definitely always different -  I preferred  a good book over parties, drugs or boys.  There is a part of me now that thinks I have taken the world way too seriously before my time and another that is grateful that I have somehow always known myself enough to know when to stop, step ahead or step away.  

My journey from18 to now would be the bulk of it; because here I have learnt about love (the kind that does not change or falter), loss (as no-one lives forever), sacrifice (the art of walking away), friendships (the kind that deals with shit and still stands) and to chase my dreams even if it takes me a little longer to get there. 

I am not sure which chapter I am on right now however I think turning 28 in a few months will probably require a few new priorities. 

It promises to be interesting! 

Today's thought...

Today's Reminder...

Life and Light

When i saw the picture for some reason it made me thing of the a verse on Annie where she sings... "The sun'll come out Tomorrow, Bet your bottom dollar that Tomorrow there'll be sun! Just thinking about Tomorrow clears away the cobwebs and the sorrow...."

With that i realize that Life isn’t a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, latte in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming ‘Woohoo WHAT A RIDE’!

Cycles of Poverty

A few days ago I met a young man from a township just outside of Klerksdorp; we had a conversation for about two hours while he showed me some of his community.

I have seen many townships in my life and have lived most of my childhood and teen years on the Cape Flats so I am no stranger to poverty and hardship however I found seeing it through his eyes interesting and more real than I had imagined.

This young man through his articulate words took me through a short journey of his life and daily struggle to keep his head above water; he showed me the outside taps and toilets his family has to share with 2 other households. He took me through the dusty streets so I can see where some of his neighbours need to leave their dirt because there hasn’t been refuse collection in years.

He showed me his neighborhood in the rawest form and after some prying on my part he shared with me his story of being raised by a single mother and how he has tried to get out of the rut he finds himself in. Work is scarce and he could not get into a university because his mother (who is the only family provider) cannot afford it. His family struggles to keep their house, pay their bills and still have a meal each night.

This young man has never heard of a study loan and before i came along no one has ever discussed FET options with him, he didn’t even know that there was an FET college 30 minutes away in the nearest town.

In the middle of this conversation I came to realise that he like so many of the other teens I have had the opportunity to engage with over the last few months were uninformed and left to fend for themselves in a somewhat unjust world. They are somehow set on cycles of poverty that they will not get out of unless they start to think beyond the borders of their safe communities.

Standing there in his community I couldn’t stop thinking of a quote by John Green, where he says “There is no Them. There is only facets of Us”. This young man and the many others i have met and know by name reminded me that there will be no great reward without taking great risk; so i hope that in the years to come i will get to see some of them again and they would have lived beyond the cycles.

Being more....

Someone once told me that "you need to be more of what you want to see in the world, that will make it better".

Safe to say at that point in my life i did not understand the expression or what my very philosophical friend meant by it, I just thought she was being her whimsical self with her anecdotes on life.

But today while doing some preparation work (for my own big step) her words resonated with me once more; "you need to be more of what you want to see in the world..." from this i take that if i want to see goodness and light in this world i need for it to start with me and what i project to the world.  If i want great adventures and new beginnings i need to be open to them, be open to taking a chance and risking it a little.

Not an easy task i know.

As crazy as it may sound this expression reminds me that my projection of life and light to the world will somehow be projected back into my own life, it may not happen in the ways i expect nor will it happen  overnight but it will happen.

I know that i cannot miraculously change the world but my thoughts and my deeds can make it better.

Todays thought

Examine the contents of your life and not the bottle that you think it comes in...

Trial and Error

I have always been told that the lesson is in the journey and not the destination. The journey is what builds your character, it is what reveals your strengths and weaknesses. Only when we are brave enough to take road less traveled can we discover who we are.

Sometimes we need to be bold and take time to try!

A little reminder.....

Sometimes we need to look a little deeper, think a little longer and live a little more!! 

My quote for the day

“Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinion drown your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

– Steve Jobs

A bit of a reminder that we all have the power to do great things and that today is the best day to get started on what you truly want to become.

Let them dream, let them live

I see so many parents trying to mould their children into little versions of themselves, pushing their little ones into dreams that they themselves could not fulfil and forgetting that the child needs to find his/her own dreams in this world.

Kahlil Gibran says it perfectly;

Your children are not your children. 

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. 

They come through you but not from you, 

and though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. 

You may give them your love, but not your thoughts. 

For they have their own thoughts. 

You may house their bodies but not their souls, 

for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, 

which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. 

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. 

For life goes not backward, nor tarries with yesterday. 

Kahlil Gibran

So let us not use our children in this life to live our dreams but rather encourage them every day so that they know they can live their own.   

Let us let them dream! 

Today's Thought

Sometimes we all get so caught up in what we have or don't have, to an extent that we forget to really live and enjoy the life we are given.  

Like Mark Twain said; "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

So make each day count!