Repeat

You know those days when your life just seems to be on repeat?  We hit those moments again and again and each time we have to find the motivation to push through.  For me, it’s about finding the extrinsic motivation.  Will it be a half hour of TV, will it be a coffee out, will it be one piece of chocolate, a trip to the shops, a new pair of shoes… what on earth could it possibly be to get me to move on through that line.  Some days I don’t think that anything could get me there.  I’ve read the same line three, four, eighty-seven times over and still I can’t make any sense of whatever that kid may have meant.  So it’s on repeat. The same line, over and over again on repeat.

I have bought a number of things in my life with the adage, “yes, you do deserve them.”  I am linked up, synced up, can download, upload, listen, watch and shop at any time I want.   The ability to find something to make me work harder just seems to be disappearing.  Yes, these are very much first world problems and I do know that I am whining about something that a living, breathing, part way healthy human should probably just quit talking about.  But here’s the point.  I spend most of this time of year finding the extrinsic motivation and this year it just went a little bit different.  Last week I stood on the edge of sanity in my professional life.  I had enough work to sink the titanic when a colleague at work broke her ankle and I was received the joy and pain of doing hers as well.  While I feel for said colleague, truth be told, I felt more for myself.  That same day, I got a text from a friend saying that a much younger friend of theirs had died that day.

At the age of 11 this kid had decided that he was going to stop treatment and live the rest of his life the way he wanted.  And he did.  He passed away the same day I stood on my so-called precipice staring down at the mountains of work that lay at my feet.  The mountains didn’t get any smaller the more I looked at them but the height of my precipice shortened dramatically.  I wasn’t standing on the edge of anything, my stress was self-created and would have probably ended up being self-fulfilling.  That kid spent the last six months of his life on the edge of a precipice.  He stood there, looking down, made a decision and laughed at the distance there was to fall.

Today, re-reading the same line for the ninety-seventh time, I didn’t set a new goal of a pair of shoes, a piece of chocolate, a session of Internet shopping or even a half-hour of TV.  Life is too short for that, I took a breath, realised I was still breathing and that if I kept going my mountain would disappear.  I am grateful that my mountains disappear.  Grateful that there are people in my life who remind me of that on rare occasions but just grateful that I am aware enough to realise that some people will never get to come down from their mountains ever again.