It really is.

That doesn’t mean it’s always easy. Sometimes life is bloody hard.

But be it easy or hard, you have to live it.

Ok, ok I need to explain myself a little more. I’m going to get there but I also have to get back into the groove of this blog thing.

Sorry, I’ve neglected you for awhile. For a few different reasons, and let’s be honest about them. I’ve been living life, ha ha. I’ve been lazy when it comes to my blog writing, boo. I got sick with a gastro bug, yuk, and I’m not even going to go into that here in this post. Suffice to say I’m better, that’s the main thing. Distractions, excuses, no routine, blah blah blah. Whatever, we’ve heard it all before. Except now I’ve created a routine, just this week. I book myself in for writing sessions, just like I would have booked clients in. So I honour the writing now just like I would have honoured my clients. It seems to be working, yay.

Have I mentioned that one of my distractions was another kind of writing. I’ve started writing a novel, ooh. Hm, I’ve let the cat out of the bag with that one now. The things you do when you get a cancer diagnosis, which, madly, I got ten months ago. And I’m still here. Hooray!

And you’re still here with me. Double hooray. Thanks for sticking around and being patient with my slack writing. But hopefully slack no more.

Which brings me back full circle to writing a new post about living life, via a quick mention about the art work at the start.

The colourful ‘Live’ art at the start of this post is by John Hain and you can find it here: https://pixabay.com/illustrations/live-be-being-presence-here-now-511556/

Live life! It’s that simple. Cancer has taught me that. Wish I’d learnt it without getting cancer, but that’s a whole other story.

Everyday I wake up I’m grateful for another day. Most days I look up and say “Thank you for another day of life.” Well, I say it at some point during the day. Somedays I even forget, but on most I say it.

Just like you my life has had its ups and downs. I’ve had incredible highs and agonising lows. When I look back now I realise what a journey it’s been, and I’m planning on that journey continuing for awhile longer. Thank you very much.

With that journey moving forwards I plan on it being a lot simpler. Actually let me rewrite that. I plan on living it much more simply. I can choose to make it simple or complicated. I can’t choose all the things that will happen, good or bad, but I can choose how to live through all those moments. I can choose how to react to what happens in my life.

Choices can be easy sometimes but they can also be incredibly hard as well. I’ve agonised over decisions in my life at times. What I’ve come to realise though as I’ve looked back over my life is that I’m the one that’s complicated everything. It’s my brain that’s over thought the process, no one else’s. I’ve wasted time in my life by over complicating so much of it. It would be fair to say that at times I’ve been my own worst enemy. I’ve come to the conclusion that trying to workout all my possible futures is pointless. I’ll deal with it when I get there, because who knows which one I’m going to get.

The future is unwritten, the past can’t be rewritten, but the present moment, now that’s a thing of beauty.

The present moment is all mine. Just like your present moment is all yours. What are we both going to do with it?

I’m going to pause writing this post and make a pot of green tea. Remember green tea, it’s good for you. Go read my post about it, after you’ve finished this one. If you want to. It’s very simple, the choice is yours. Your moment, your choice.

Back soon, tea making time.

I’m back. Green tea on the brew. I’m having organic green gunpowder tea. I like this one.

I’ll sit here and take a moment. Feel the warm mug in my hands, smell the aroma of the tea. Take a sip, enjoy the flavour. Saviour the moment. A moment to stop, be at one with myself. Sipping the tea, listening to the birds outside, the wind in the trees. Peacefulness. Then a truck beeping as it reverses, the neighbours coming home and slamming car doors, someone revving their car way too loud. Hey, I never said every moment was perfect.

What I’m feeling though, or being a part of, is life all around me. The simplicity of just sitting here and immersing myself in life, in the moment. The present, here and now. Just feeling it. Try it as you read this. Just stop and just sit in this moment and feel everything around you. I’ll wait for you. Don’t think about it, just do it. It’s very simple.

Did you try? Or have you just kept reading? No judgement.

Reading is a moment unto itself too. Right now you’re in the present moment and that’s all that matters. Why? Well, because all you have is the present moment. The only time you are alive is in the present moment. You’re not alive in your past, that’s gone. You’re not alive in your future, you haven’t got there yet.

You’re alive right now, so live right now. Grasp this moment with every aspect of who you are, because how you live this moment may just affect all the new moments you’re going to get.

You may not be able to rewrite the past but you can learn from it. Learning as you move forwards allows you to simplify the present moment. Simplifying the present moment, hopefully makes for better future moments.

For example I just pressed ‘Save draft’ at the top of the page. I’ve learnt from the past that not saving as you go along is a real bastard if the internet drops out, or there’s a power cut, etc. I lose everything I’ve written, and that sucks the big one. But I’ve learnt. So every once in awhile, in the present moment, I save my work. That makes the future much simpler if everything crashes, because I can get everything back again. That was a very, dare I say it, simple example. But I hope it gets my point across.

I don’t want to trivialise all this though. So let me give you a more profound, and slightly more challenging one.

I had my last PET scan back in April, in the hospital. I’ve already written posts about scanxiety and the results. Read those posts if you want to know more about that, I’m not going to go over that again now. I’ve also probably changed as a person a little since then. I should say certain aspects of me have changed and maybe how I view life. I’m still fundamentally me but I’ve evolved and grown.

Anyway, back to the plot. I was in my boxer shorts and a hospital gown, sat in a wheel chair in the bowels of the hospital. I’d been wheeled from one part of the hospital to this area by a very chatty hospital porter. Had a good chat, I enjoyed that. I could have walked but they insisted I be chauffeur driven in this souped-up wheel chair, and why not? You’ve got to make the most of these little luxuries in life.

I’m in a waiting area for radiology. Just hanging around in my wheel chair lost in my thoughts, entertaining myself in the moment. Waiting for someone from radiology to come and get me. Then I get a reality check. No one else is in a wheel chair. The other two people in this area are in beds. They are receiving palliative care. Possibly even end-of-life care. I didn’t look too closely but you can see it. Memories of my father came flooding back. He died of cancer back in 1998.

These moments bring all sorts of emotions flooding back to the surface. No point denying them because they are real. Although there are points in my life when I have denied them but pushing them back down doesn’t help. The more you deny your emotions the more you destroy yourself. I know, I’ve done it, I’ve learnt the hard way. I firmly believe that, but cancer has given me the opportunity to realise this. Time can be short so allow the emotions to flow. It may just save your life. However, it’s also important to know why they come up. Where do these long hidden emotions come from? What’s their real root cause because it’s possible to delude the self with that as well. Still let’s leave emotional self-delusion for another day.

An older man was wheeled past me in his bed, coming back from radiology and all I could see was my father. For a brief moment I also saw a possible future self. These moments are hard, these moments we don’t want to live through. Just like no one wants to live through being abused, or hearing about the death of a loved one, or being told you’ve got cancer. Sadly though some of us have to. We have to live through moments in life that we haven’t and would never choose. We have to endure them until they are over. We have to live those painful moments and get through them. Some people cope better than others.

They are the present when they are happening though, and you can’t escape the present moment until it passes to the next moment. Can you learn from these moments? I believe you can. Maybe not at the time because sometimes it takes all of your will power just to endure them. Down the track though I believe you can.

However, in that moment, in that hospital looking at that old man, I had two realisations.

The first was to offer compassion. No words were spoken but I met his eyes with mine and I held them as long as he wanted to look at me. I felt I could and should give him that. Human connection is so important, no matter how fleeting it is. When you’re scared you don’t want to feel alone. I don’t know if he was scared but for those few moments while he was looking into my eyes he wasn’t alone. I held him with my eyes and imagined I was giving him a hug. He deserved that at the least. For a brief moment it looked like he smiled and then he was gone. Back off to whatever ward he came from.

The second realisation I had was that I had renewed determination. Whatever the results of this scan I wasn’t going out in a hospital bed. I wasn’t going to give up. I was going to give this desire for life everything in the way that I figured was best. I’m still figuring out what some of that way is, but some of it I’ve already figured out, and I’m still here so something must be working.

In that present moment in radiology, in the hospital, I learnt something. I realised not to repress old emotions from the past and I found an even stronger desire to live life.

I made a choice. I could have slipped into self-pity about emotions related to my dad. I could have felt sorry for myself. I’ve done that before and maybe I’ll do it again. I won’t know until life puts me in a challenging moment again. Instead though I decided to try and bring something positive out of a difficult moment in time. Will it make my future better? That I don’t know either but right now I’m better off for it.

I’m better off for it because it reinforces that you have to live life. Take every precious moment and live it. Life comes and life goes. The good times pass and the bad times pass. Nothing stays the same forever. Life is ever changing. Always in a state of flux.

As I mentioned before there are good and bad times. Which is why it is so important to live life. Keep it as simple as possible, enjoy the present moment. Make the most of the good times. Absolutely grab those good times, saviour every moment of them. Live those moments because they are so precious because as we know they don’t last for ever.

When I say live life I put the emphasis on live. Don’t just exist, actually live. I think we have a duty to do that.

Why? Because right now all around the world there are people who are suffering, for a multitude of different reasons. They have to endure terrible times while waiting for those times to end. Some will survive and some won’t.

So when life is good grab it, run with it, live it. You owe it to yourself, to the core of your soul, and you owe it to the ones who won’t get those moments again.

If climbing mountains makes you happy, go climb them. If watching reality TV shows makes you happy, go watch them. Whatever floats your boat. Do it for the right reasons though. Do it because it genuinely makes you happy, genuinely makes you feel alive. That you are living the moment with every cell in your body.

As an aside, neither of those two things do it for me. So I don’t tend to do either of them. I’ve tried rock climbing and realised it wasn’t for me and the same can be said for reality TV. I have different passions in life. We’re all different, you’ve just got to find yours.

Find it, live it, enjoy it and grab those precious moments. So when death comes and taps on your shoulder, and you never know when that’s going to happen, you’ll have no regrets about the life you’ve lived. You’ll take their hand and cross over that bridge to the other world with a big smile on your face.

I want to write about death and facing my own mortality. How it’s changed my perceptions on life, but I’ll save it for another day. All I’m saying right now is cancer has given me the opportunity to do that and it’s an eye opener.

Not everyone gets that opportunity with death because for a lot of people it comes out of the blue. The worst kind of curved ball that we don’t see coming. Which is why life is so precious.

There’s a short scene from Kung Fu Panda you should watch. Check it out below.

Till next time.

Don’t just exist. Live life!

Love, Jon