Image via Pinterest.
You know what, the world isn’t fair.
Waiters take your order wrong and serve you orange juice when you specifically asked for carrot, apple and ginger, and Clinique Beauty Experts will sell you over-priced oily-skin moisturizer when you clearly explained your face is combination.
People let you down, others forget about you, you forget about someone else, and the selfish person gets what you deserve. It all seems so worthy of being negative and upset over.
It’s insane how comfortable we are in our drama blanket, but how many of us have actually ever felt the cold, the real cold?
Does anyone truly grasp the reality that good things happen to bad people, and bad things happen to those totally undeserving of pain and sadness? It’s haunting to comprehend that no matter what we focus on, strive towards, want, desire and pray for; sometimes there is a pre-written story which is totally and utterly set in stone – unchangeable by any amount of tears and wishes for it not to be.
How totally thwarting, humbling, and terrifyingly insightful it is, when we finally appreciate that there are actually real things to be upset about – like losing someone you love, forever.
I’ll never be able to understand why life and this world hands out what it does, and it scares me a little to think that no matter how positively a life is led, there is no guarantee of constant sunshine and happy days. So life is a gamble. Every damn day there are a million things that could go perfectly right or gravely wrong. A smile you could see, or a fight you could encounter. A turn for the better, or a turn for the absolute worse.
And for once, I don’t have an answer for any of it. I’m speechless.
Because as much as I want to believe I can run the world, I’m humbly reminded that reality is untouchable – and it doesn’t care how broken it leaves your heart. For that, I am sorry. I am sorry because the only thing I can come up with, is that in those moments of utterly mind-numbing pain, the only thing left to do is to somehow piece together that shattered glass inside your chest, and love.
Love that before the tears there were so many smiles your cheeks burned from. That before the incessant wails and screams for things to be different, there was laughter that hurt just as hard. That one day, maybe not in a week, month or year, but one day – everything will stop aching, even if just a teeny bit less.
Each day, hour and minute, someone’s world is turning upside down for better or worse, and if you’re reading this, you have to appreciate that for right now, while I’ve got you for just a second you’re mine and safe.
So when you finish reading this, I’d like to ask you to stop. Stop, look up, close your eyes and smile.
Smile because in this moment, everything is perfect, you are healthy, you have people you love around you, and although you have no real clue as to what today or tomorrow will hold, for now you all you have to do is breathe. But I ask you to smile for those who don’t have it in them to the same in this second, and share the beat of your heart with others who will never be able to return it. Smile because although pain and loss is paralyzing, you have the ability to love harder than ever.
For a second, I dare you to take off your blanket and step into the snow – it’s cold out there, but summer will always come.
To two great men: thank-you for being you, the legendary fathers my best friends love and adore.
To my girls who lost them, thank-you for being an example of strength I look up to everyday.
To everyone else this Christmas, hug your annoying cousin a little tighter than usual, and laugh at every single one of your uncle’s bad jokes. Love, appreciate and treasure this special time with the people who love you.
Merry Christmas.
Love, S.
