Taken by: AlphaTangoBravo / Adam Baker

If you are under the impression that one day all the confusion in this life will simply make sense. I hate to burst your bubble, but you are sadly mistaken. It won’t. You can’t look forward to perfection, and chances are you’re going to be facing challenges every day for the remainder of your life.

I’d also like to point out that your life isn’t so bad. You probably tend to focus on all those bad little details that gnaw at your soul and forget that there are actually some pretty decent things going on. When your heart is broken and it seems that nothing can possibly comfort you, do you acknowledge the friends who stand by you and hold you up?

Do you have food on the table, a roof over your head? Sure it’s cliche, but that doesn’t make it any less true. One thing people tend to forget is that a cliche is only a cliche because it was used SO much that it lost its meaning and impact.

So what’s my point? Life will rarely be easy, it’s not meant to be a breeze. If you’re living in a rut because you’re expecting things to change and suddenly make everything ok – it doesn’t work that way.

You have the power to live an incredible life – you might not even have to make any changes in your current existence.

Take myself for example. I’m a writer – this immediately puts me in the ‘most unlikely to succeed’ category. I’m not even going to get started on the mess I made of my love life. I live alone in a tiny little house. I have no pets. By the time I get home from work I have no motivation to write fiction – conveniently side-stepping achieving my goals each and every day.

But. I have people in my life who make me happy. Who are good to me. I have a family who loves me and will always stand by me. I have an imagination that, while it might plague my dreams, also allows me to see a world that most people cannot even fathom.

My house, while old and not even mine, is so full of character that it somehow manages to suit me perfectly. And the heat works like an absolute charm.

I could focus on the fact that I am not even remotely in the place I thought I would be right now. I could berate myself for not going to University and getting that all-important degree. I could consider myself a failure because I still haven’t finished even one single manuscript. And sometimes I do.
I don’t want to sound like I have all the answers and I handle life so incredibly well. I’ve just realized that on those rather common days where life seems to drag me down and then proceeds to beat the crap out of me – it’s all those good little things that pick me up, dust me off and give me the kick in the pants I need to deal with life.

It’s how I look at my life that determines whether it’s a good one or not. I would encourage anyone who is feeling down to be willing see their life from a different angle – you might be surprised what you see.

This tangent I have taken is really making me want to say thank you to all the people who contribute to the ‘good stuff’ in my life.

I absolutely love you all. 

Taken by: Noël Zia Lee