Letting Go

Ring out the old ring in the new.....

I haven't posted for a while - I've been busy with a new job, after a period of unemployment. It's not been the easiest period of my life by a long chalk, but I'm finally coming to the end of it, and it's time to start thinking again about the future, and what that may hold.

The original aim of this blog was to try to find out who I am, what makes me tick, and to try and rediscover a childlike curiosity about life, the universe, etc, etc.

I'd love to be able to say that I have some answers, but I'm afraid that, at the moment they elude me.

All I do know is that the past is gone. It's just dust, photographs and memories, good or bad. The future is as yet unknown - it's not mapped out for us, much as we would love it to be. People spend hundreds of thousands of pounds consulting psychics, fortune tellers, palm-readers and the like, in order to find out what their future holds, to give them something to hold out for, to look forward to, or to avoid. The truth is, no-one knows what outside, uncontrollable event may come to scupper their plans.

The only time frame anyone can control is right now. This moment. As soon as you think about it, it's already gone, consigned to history.

Ignorance is bliss. Ignorance of the future is also bliss.

However, and more importantly, our past influences our future, and our present much more than we might think. Every decision we make, the way we present ourselves to the rest of the world is influenced by our past. We become conditioned into a way of acting, thinking and being based upon what has, or has not worked for us before. Nurture.

This is sometimes a good thing. It stops us from walking out in front of a bus, because knowlege tells us that we could get hurt. We don't go to see a particular film, or eat particular foods because we tried them in the past, and they did not agree with us.

Unfortunately though, this behaviour can have a limiting effect, and, if we are not careful can end up with us not doing anything that takes us outside of our safety zone. If we're not careful we can end up wrapped in a bubble.

And this is where this little preamble is taking me. I've wrapped myself up in a big, soft comfortable blanket. I take no risks. Nothing can hurt me. I'm safe.

But I'm also half dead. Doing the same old things with the same outcomes. Round and round in ever decreasing circles. Things start off the same way, and inevitably finish the same way, because my approach to whatever it may be, work, romance, friendships, is the same.

I don't wholeheartedly put myself into the situation, or I deliberately sabotage it before it can go too far, or I simply opt out when it gets difficult.

No more of this. I've had enough of it.

I need to live again, and not be half-dead.

Time to take some risks in my life and see where that takes me, instead of always playing it safe.