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0 By Frances Beck
It’s a fact of life that ‘shit happens’ to everyone. Hard times do not show any discrimination against who a person is, what they do, what they’ve done, how ‘good’ or ‘bad’ they are, or whether or not they are deserving of a situation.
In Life, hard times befall us all
The older we get, the law of averages means that we have more experience of this and have a relatively better understanding of it. Yet we seem to consistently set ourselves up for a fall. The vast majority of us seem to have a disregard for the remarkable fragility of life in any given moment. We don’t want to acknowledge the fact that everything can change in a heartbeat.
Trying to live in blissful ignorance is completely understandable, but in my own experience it leaves you wanting when the worst does happen. You are left with so many ‘I wish’ scenarios because you lived with the expectation that you would have plenty of time to say and do what you wanted to. In reality, we end up never doing half of what we plan to.
Last week was the UK’s mental health awareness week, and it was so good to see the support for something that is so close to my own heart. I’ve battled with the black dog on and off for many years throughout my adult life. Now looking back, also throughout my teenage years as well. As difficult and desperate as that was for me, it was nothing in comparison to losing my baby boy to his own desperation through battling depression himself. Although I have a very good understanding of what he was going through, it’s important to say that each person who has mental health difficulties goes through their own individual experiences, so I don’t completely know.
Conor struggled to understand it himself. Mental health awareness week may be over, but please remember that people who suffer need your support all year long. Especially given that’s 1 in 4 people at any given time, you definitely know a few.
Live in the moment
At a point where too many of my friends and family are going through their own health trials and tough times, I live in the eternal hope that everything will come good. But I’m trying really hard not to have any expectations and to live very much in the moment.
We should all be saying and doing everything that we want to, regardless of how strange or alien it is to us. In life, our only real regrets are about the things that we didn’t do. So, be brave and just do it. Life is far too short not to. Embrace life and everything that comes with it. The bad lets you appreciate the good. Living in the present moment allows you to get the full joy from the good times and helps you cope better with the harder times.
Love the people that treat you well and walk away from the people that don’t. None of us are promised tomorrow, so don’t live with the expectation that you will still have time. Life is remarkably fragile, despite how tough it looks. ?
UNITED STATES
UNITED KINGDOM
