Life is a Journey

Yes, life is a journey... one that is much better traveled with a companion by your side. Of course that companion can be just about anyone – a neighbor on the other side of the street, or someone on the other side of the bed. The companion could be a mother of good intentions, or a child who’s up to no good (whew! that was tough!). Still despite our best intentions, some of us will lose our companions along the way.... And the journey becomes unbearable. You see, human beings are designed for many things… and loneliness is not one of them.


[from Desperate Housewives]

FEAR...

A couple of hundred years ago, Benjamin Franklin shared with the world the secret of his success. 'Never leave that 'til tomorrow,' he said, 'which you could do today.' This is the man who discovered electricity. You’d think more of us would listen to what he had to say. I don’t know why we put things off, but if I had to guess, I’d say it had a lot to do with fear. Fear of failure. Fear of pain. Fear of rejection. Sometimes the fear is just of making a decision, because what if you’re wrong. What if you make a mistake you can’t undo. Whatever it is we're afraid of, one thing holds true. That by the time the pain of not doing the thing gets worse than the fear of doing it. It can feel like we're carrying around a giant tumor…

The early bird catches the worm...a stitch in time saves nine... He who hesitates is lost... We can't pretend we haven't been told. We've all heard the proverbs, heard the philosophers, heard our grandparents warning us about wasted time, heard the damn poets urging us to ‘seize the day'. Still sometimes we have to see for ourselves... We have to make our own mistakes... We have to learn our own lessons. We have to sweep today's possibility under tomorrow's rug until we can't anymore, until we finally understand for ourselves like Benjamin Franklin meant. That knowing is better than wondering, that waking is better than sleeping. And that even the biggest failure, even the worst most intractable mistake beats the heck out of never trying...

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[ another one fr "grey's anatomy." ]

PAIN...

Pain... it comes in all forms. The small twinge, a bit of soreness, the random pain that we live with everyday. Then there is the kind of pain you just can't ignore... a level of pain so great that it blocks out everything else, makes the rest of your world fade away until all we can think about is how much we hurt. How we manage our pain is up to us.... We anaesthetize... ride it out... embrace it... ignore it... and for some of us the best way to manage pain is to just push through it.

Pain... you just have to ride it out, hope it goes away on its own, hope the wound that caused it heals. There are no solutions, no easy answers. You just breathe deep and wait for it to subside. Most of the time pain can be managed, but sometimes the pain gets you when you least expect it, hits way below the belt and doesn't let up. Pain you just have to fight through, because the truth is you can't outrun it... and life always makes more...


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[this is a narration from "grey's antomy" season 2, episode 5. one of my favorite episodes. hilarious. very. you will really laugh. and of course dramatic.]

REALITY BITES...

Sometimes reality has a way of sneaking up and biting us in the ass. And when the dam bursts, all you can do is swim. The world of pretend is a cage, not a cocoon. We can only lie to ourselves for so long. We are tired, we are scared, and denying it doesn't change the truth. Sooner or later we have to put aside our denial and face the world, head on, guns blazing... Denial. It's not just a river in Egypt. It's a freakin' ocean. So how do you keep from drowning in it?"

The key to surviving is denial. We deny we're tired, we deny that we're scared, we deny how badly we want to succeed. And most importantly, we deny that we're in denial. We only see what we want to see and believe what we want to believe, and it works. We lie to ourselves so much that after a while the lies start to seem like the truth. We deny so much that we can't recognize the truth... right in front of our faces


[Grey's Anatomy]