‘This is my life; It’s not perfect, but it’s mine.’

 

Something about what Tim Minchin says in the above song, (provided that my embedding skills are awesome enough to get it in there, (no that wasn’t meant to sound rude)), really resonated in the vast, mostly empty halls of the inside of my head. This entire week has been spent, for the most part, dealing with the much-dreaded ‘drama’ that comes along with being a human being. It’s felt a bit like a siege from all sides, made much more desperate by the fact that some of the corrupt officers within the city walls decided to have a bit of a drama of their own. I’m not one for complaining much, unless you’re my wife, in which case, I AM SORRY YOU HEARD THE SAME STORY ELEVEN TIMES, BUT, DEAL WITH IT, YOU (fake) MARRIED ME. I was sitting in this ‘little pit of grr’ as I like to call it sometimes, thinking about how much the world could change if I just had this much money or lived in this place, or if I could be bothered focusing for all of a week to blast out an armada of work that I can submit to all of the places so I will be super-rich and famous and win all of the- It was while thinking this, in that lovely thing we as a species tend to do called ‘Not doing things because you’re too busy thinking about how awesome life will be when you’ve done them’, that I realised just how happy I am in life, right at this moment. As Tim says, it might not be perfect, but it’s mine.

Lets just take a moment and think about that. Let the mantra sink in, say it a few more times; ‘Life might not be perfect, but it’s mine.’ Do you feel that sense of power? There’s something in that, something in understanding that, that really fires up my soul. I fear that we often feel lost in life. We spend far too much of our time just rolling around being sad, feeling that, ‘If only we had this, or that, life would be better.’ If only something external would happen, everything would fix itself. When I repeat that mantra in my head, (as I have been doing while writing this article, because it just gives me the nicest buzz), I feel like I’m cutting through that. I think that, if we want life to get better for us, and for everyone around us, we have to take charge of our lives, take charge of ourselves. Destiny is not a thing that will move for you without you giving it a good kick up the bum first. And that, in itself, is a fascinating realisation.

There is a story about the Coronation of Napoleon that, while modern scholars debate it’s accuracy, I still find quite inspiring. The story goes that, when Napoleon was being crowned the Emperor of the French, His Holiness Pope Pius VII tried to place the specially made crown on Napoleon’s head, only to have him take it out of his hands and proclaim himself to be an Emperor crowned by man, not by God. While it’s a little disappointing that this story isn’t strictly true, there’s a moral to be found in it. Napoleon, essentially, decided that he was taking his life into his own hands, making his own destiny. He decided that the only person that could make him happy, the only person that could direct and organise his life into a state that he wanted to see was, of course, himself. Whenever I start to get down, or feel like I’m not in charge of my life, I repeat to myself, ‘I am my own crowner, the creator of my own destiny.’ (Because, honestly, if you’ve never tried having a personal mantra to repeat to yourself, you should. You have no idea how much it can help to just keep repeating a nice mantra in the back of your head, rather than exploding and killing everyone.)

We all need to take control of our lives, and not just that, but we all need to make the most of them. Carpe Diem isn’t a motto of, ‘Seize the day and do nothing but whatever makes you happy’, it’s a motto of, ‘Seize the day, and don’t rely on tomorrow bringing you all the things you want- build your own happiness now, today’, (at least, according to this Cracked.com article, FACTUAL*SOURCE; http://www.cracked.com/article_20251_the-5-most-frequently-misused-proverbs_p2.html ) and I think it’s important that we keep that in mind. If we try and take charge of our lives, but all we do is go out and drink every day, still maintaining a hope that everything will change by the grace of leaving the house, then we’re just repeating the same mistakes we always make; hoping that an external source will provide internal comfort. I think it’s essential that, instead of this, we all sit down, read a lot, find jobs, experiment- that we build ourselves a good, strong character, that will carry us through life’s difficulties.

We all need to learn to be happy by ourselves, how to shore up the walls in our souls, by taking charge of our lives. This is a horrible, daunting thing to think, because of all of the negative connotations of being alone. I like to think though that we’re never truly alone. Every time I think to myself, ‘Damn, I feel a bit lonely right now’, I look out my window at the people on the street and realise that, damn, they probably feel pretty lonely too.

I hope that makes some sense to you. It can be quite a nightmare, trying to organise my thoughts so that they make sense to everyone else. Oh the joys of being human, eh? Well, anyway, I have a nice little poem for you as well. (I had a short story, but I want to enter it into a competition, and there’s no pre-publishing allowed!) I hope you enjoy!

 

Do you know who I am?

You think you do, sure,

You think you see into my soul,

Mark me all down with one swift glance.

‘I know you’, you say, and dismiss my concerns.

And, hell, maybe you do. Maybe.

I don’t know me, though.

Every day is a new day.

Every day it starts again.

I see my dark three hundred and sixty five times

And lose myself the same.

Do you know who I am? Do you?

Tell me, please.

Help me know, please, help me see.

I am a whirl, a pit of mad strings of thought,

A hundred train tracks without a map.

Where am I?

Who am I?

Who- who are where?

Am I?

A-a-all is gone, all is gone,

C-c-can madness descend,

Can- can find we in pits of

Are the seeing

Who? Where do we keep

And first ourselves and keep

And find and keep and where

Itself and where am I

and who am I and

where am who and I

and

 

It falls flat, when you don’t know.

It’s hard to see how knowledge burns,

How the self can kill.

Am I mad for losing myself,

To the torrent of thoughts that drown me?

Or am I just like you,

Lost and alone in the world.

 

Well, that’s all from me this week. As ever, you can drop me a line at jol20@aber.ac.uk, if you want to have a nice chat about the world, or, if you want to have a sad chat about the world, or if you want to have a chat in general. I really like hearing peoples stories.

See y’all next week!
I’m a cool person,
Jordan