Life is Transitory

Life is transitory. How do I know that? I looked it up in the dictionary and it says: Transitory means “of a passing nature; not enduring or permanent; temporary, fleeting”. And that is so true about life! The feeling really hit me when I was cleaning out a desk at home a few weeks ago. The things that came out of there, some of which I had almost forgotten about, all brought back to me so many memories of specific places in time that I was staggered. And this is only about eight or nine years worth of stuff, I don’t really have much from before that time. So it really hit me that this pile of stuff would only get bigger. What kind of stuff you ask? Well there are things ranging from birthday cards (especially the handmade kind but the other kind too, the message inside them make them special), bookmarks (I just love collecting those!), mementos (invitation cards, ribbons, fancy badges, sea shells), notes on scraps of paper, diaries with scribbles of song lyrics or half finished stories, calligraphy sheets, folders, old calendars with nice pictures on them, precious stationery, a few photographs from back in day we used to actually print them and the list simply goes on..

Anyway, this got me thinking (what’s new?!), and it occurred to me that we use this transitory nature of life as an excuse and keep planning for the future which never does really appear. We keep telling ourselves that this phase of life will just pass by soon and then we shall do all things that we have always planned. But actually it should be the absolute reverse of that! We should be living in the here and now, making the most of the phase we’re going through right now instead of waiting for it to finish and a better time to begin. There will be no better time if we don’t make it so; so the closet that we’re planning to clean out next month, or the early morning exercise that we so want to start but keep putting off till next week, or that we want to cook but next weekend always sounds better, all these things are just exercises in procrastination. Want to be more updated about happenings in the world? Start reading the news today; Want to get fit? Go for a walk right now; Want to read or write more? Start right now. It really doesn’t matter what it is, the answer always lies in taking action. Nothing stops us from doing the things we want to do or to put it the other way which I find that people respond to better is that nothing forces us to not act. Only that little fear inside of us that we may not be good enough or not be able to achieve what we set out to do or someone else might not like what we do; but quite frankly none of us is perfect and every mistake is an opportunity to learn so that we get just a little better at it. It’s just the decision that we need to make really and the rest will all take care of itself; the decision to be what we want and do what we want. So that in another ten years time when we clean out that desk full of memories we are satisfied with what we see and not regret that there are missing pieces that we could have had but just didn’t do anything about. Something to think about… Until next time, cheers!