A few days back I was having a talk with a close friend who is going through a tough time. So rather than try to minimize his/her pain by using platitudes such as : it will get better, or that there are worse things in the world I asked a simple question:
How can I help?
Their reply was "Do you have a time machine?"
So I said "Let's say I did. What would you do differently?"
And he/she told me "I'd make ___________ a priority instead of just thinking he/she would be there for me always."
If there is anything more painful than a broken heart, and I am not sure there is, but it may be regret. It would have been easy to fall back and say something hackneyed like "i am sure it will work out for the best"or "if it's meant to be ....." but that would have served absolutely not one fucking purpose, and even if I believe it to be true, I don't know it to be true. I thought it would be better to be honest so I explained one thing that has helped me before is now that they had come to that conclusion, and we know the past cannot be changed, what's critically important is that you realize & recognize that today can be changed. Tomorrow can be changed. And the day after that and so on. While it sucks that we have no influence over the past, too often we fail to realize we have influence over the future and the only failure is if we do not learn from the past.
I've thought about this conversation and my friend everyday since....so pardon the rant but ......We would all be so much better off if we would stop linking articles from the bolde #ForRealz or thoughtcatalog #AllTheFeels. Please just fucking stop before I bludgeon you with your Iphone. I promise you the answers to life's most difficult questions were not penned by some hipster wearing black framed glasses (which they don't even fucking need to wear) on his MacBook Air87 whilst drinking a $13 mocha-latte-hipster-douchebag with stevia.
Stop thinking about all the things you want to do, or need to change. Just get up and fucking change. Find a feedback loop and listen to it. A true friend, preferably someone with scars, emotional and physical, who won't pull punches but will be honest with you and help you walk on days you feel you may not be able to. There comes a time in a short life, we can turn it around, get a rewrite...it's called today.
The fact is the most valuable commodity in the universe is time. It's the only thing you cannot buy, you cannot create, you cannot borrow.....and your time is finite. Infinitesimally small. You will die. Very. Fucking. Soon. This can be a depressing a realization....or.....it can be a liberating one.
It's been said that the graveyard is the richest place on earth bc it is teeming with unfulfilled dreams, gifts, ideas and potential. Imagine if you will being on your death bed....and standing around your bed are the ghosts of the ideas, the dreams, the abilities and talents given to you by Life ... And there they are standing around your bed looking at you with large angry eyes saying we came to you! And ONLY YOU could have given us life.
Question is: If you died today what ideas, what dreams , what talents, what gifts, or what PERSON, would die w you? For what is everyday but a choice, a series of conflicts bw the right way and the easy way; the person you are being or the person a couple of years from now you will wish you had been? Everyday that we aren't the person we wish to be, we create our own regret, and the need for that time machine my friend asked for. However, and this may be the most important realization I've come to in my life:
You can be today, and for the rest of your days, the person you wish you were yesterday.
