I desire a difficult life.

Life is a game, and we all get to be player one, right? So why would anyone want life to be easy? When I play a game and I have it set to the lowest difficulty it is insane how stupidly easy that game is to beat. It takes no effort, no drive, I simply have to go through the most basic motions. Life is no different. Life is just another game and when you set it to the easiest settings, all you really need to do is eat sleep, relieve yourself and move on. That is simple, it is boring and inane and I will never do it.

I lost today, and not by any small margin. I took part in a Iron Man challenge and I simply could not compete. I was slower, less fit, I had less endurance,  but I completed the challenge. I took on a challenge that I knew I could not complete fully for one simple reason, or a question rather. Why not? I could have simply sat in my tent and gone and done some simply form of training later, but instead I decided to get up and go compete in this six stationed competition and fail. Why? Why would I purposefully set myself up for failure? I felt like I was dying. I felt like there was no way I could complete the tasks I signed up for halfway through the competition. I tried my hardest to lift that bar one more time but I simply could not do it. Yet I tried the events and I did not quit.

There is a reason behind this. Recently, I've been looking at some old quotes and stories I saved, mostly from Bruce Lee. In one, Lee has this guy running at a decent pace for three miles, and tells him they are going to do five that day. Roughly halfway through the fourth mile, the guy says to Lee, "Bruce, if I run anymore" and they are still running, "if I run anymore I'm liable to have a heart attack and die." Lee replied with two simple words. "Then die," and kept running. When they finally stopped running, after completing the fifth mile and cooling off, Lee explains why he said that he should just die, he told him that he might as well be dead. If he was going to place limitations on what he can do physically, or anything else, it will seep into the rest of his life. It would spread into his work, his morals and into his entire being. There are no limits in life, there are only plateaus and you can NOT STAY AT THEM! You must go beyond them, if it kills you than so be it, but a human must constantly exceed his current level. So the man understood, he drove on. That's the thing, you can not accept what you have, you must always improve on what you have and drive forward.

So, I will never ask for an easy life. I will ask for a difficult life so that I can grow and become stronger than I was the day before.

We All Change

"When you really know who you are and what you like about yourself, changing for other people is not such a big deal" Abed Nadir

We go through our lives being told to never change who we are. To stay exactly as we are and remain this person that someone else sees us as. To never change for anyone because we are amazing how we are. I personally say this is bullshit. That you should change, that we all change when you think about it. As we progress through life we become different people throughout it, and that is OK, its better than OK even. Its a great thing, so long as you remember all the people that you used to be.

And that's the key though, remember all the people that you used to be. Remember that snot nosed child you were, the prima donna, the bully or the nerd, the jock or the joke. The success and the failure. Remember all the people you used to be. I remember I was the scholastic as a child, ahead of my class. I remember being the outcast, the ignored. I remember being the gamer and the lover. A cheater and a loyal man. I remember all of these people I used to be. I remember that I have not always been who I am now. That I did not always have my morals, my acceptance, my tolerances and loves. I remember not 10 yrs ago I would never have associated with the people I live with at home. I remember that 15 years ago, my biggest concern was running away from an abusive brother. I remember all these things but I keep one thing at the forefront of my mind. This important key fact.

Keep. Moving.

Keep moving, keep going. Learn, grow, expand, CHANGE! Change who you are so that you can be who you want to be. Are you scrawny? Gain some healthy weight and get stronger. Are you flabby? Lose that weight and gain some strength. Are you daft, dull, lazy, unmotivated? Get up, go learn. Get an education, pick up a hobby, meet someone new. No matter what you need to keep moving, you need to change who you are so that you can be the best you that YOU want you to be.

So when someone tells you to not change, ignore them. For change is a benefit. Change is a necessity. Change is paramount. Change who you are and become someone better than who you were yesterday. While who you were yesterday is chained to you, do not let those chains remain. Break free of your past and change who you will be in the future!

Because it happened.

Do not  cry because it is over, smile because it happened. 

They say that is it better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. Perhaps this is true  to some, to myself even. I know that I love many and that I have loved a few more. I know that every person I have loved has brought a richness to my life that I had otherwise not had. That I would otherwise not have experienced at all and I would have had nothing but darkness in that place. So I loved, and I lost, and I learned to loved again. The first time I lost the love, I was in despair, I was crushed and it hurt me beyond words could even describe or manifest. As time went on and I learned more, I grew more and I came to understand something. 

That I should not cry any longer because my partner and I are over, I should smile and be happy. I should be happy that it even happened. That our love was even possible. That the light of our joy blessed this plain of existence for even a brief moment in time. 

Sure, once that flame is snuffed out, the darkness returns. But look at where that flame WAS. Look at the ember that remains and the symbol of hope that it leaves behind. For an ember is never dead, and ember is the beginning of new life. I have seen a simple ember in a fire pit turn a pile of sticks and logs into a blazing flame. I have seen this occur time and again the power of just one happy memory turn that darkness away and allow the color of the world come back into full brightness. 

So please, smile. Be happy. Remember what it was like to love, because perhaps you just weren't ready for love at this time. Maybe love wasn't ready for you. But when love comes back, welcome it with open arms and say to it "Come in, sit and stay a while" because there will be a time, when you least expect it. When you will realize that you were loved by someone, and do you know what that means? It means that love will find you again and maybe it can brighten up your life as it brightens up my own.