A Thought For Sunday

A Thought For A Sunday.

The dew lay heavily on the branches of the apple trees this morning, as I stretched my weary bones and gazed out of the window over the undulating Irish countryside before me. I walked outside in my pink and grey stripy pyjamas to fill up my horse’s water bucket from the tap at the back of the garage, and I smiled as I could see the grass flattened by my foot prints.

I didn’t sleep well last night, tossing and turning with all sorts of thought processes going through my mind, and strangely as I awoke, a few words from my Uncle Jim that were spoken years ago where recalled to mind. “It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.” Now I realise that these words were not just from his wisdom, and had been spoken to many people thousands of times in the past. and will be spoken of many thousands of times again in the future, but I thought it was strange that I should just recall them at that precise moment.

My morning started off as usual with the first cup of tea for the day, which without I couldn’t function;shortly followed by feeding the dog and then parking my bum on the seat in front of the computer to check my mail. This is a habit that I have gotten into recently and one of the worst things that I have ever done, which started a few weeks ago after losing my job.

Today is Sunday, the official beginning of the week and my official start day to detach myself from checking my mail first thing in the morning. Now what has all this to do with my recalled memories? I will tell you, it has simply nothing to do with it, I ran out of conversation there for a moment, and it filled a gap? However, it has started me thinking about the saying in general.

“It is better to have loved”, very true. It is such a gift to be able to open your heart willingly to another human being, but love comes in many disguises. The love you have for your husband will never match the love that you feel for your child, or even your mother, friend or pet. They are all so intense, but of an entirely different nature. Some love you depend upon, other love is dependent on you and the thoughts and emotions that you evoke in someone else; or indeed your ability to open your heart for someone to trust and rely on you.Such qualities are unique to our own personality and we are all capable of surrendering to them, but by choice; and not possibly due to our own individual understanding of human nature.

Each and every one of us has qualities. I am as easy to understand as reading an open page in a book. My grey areas are few and far between, what you see if what you get. A friend of mine keeps everything close to her chest, but has enough love in her soul as to take in the entire nation. Another person very close to me is naturally sceptical and unwilling to allow people any closeness at all, until theyhave proved themselves to be worthy of his love. The one thing we all have in common is the ability to love another, in our own individual way.

“Better to have loved and lost”, well simply this depends on what you have lost. Grief takes shape in many forms, from depression to carrying out acts of violence. Just like love, we all deal with grief differently. For me to lose someone special either by death or to another conquest results in my questioning of my own ability to make the correct decision in the first place. Self pity is my own worst enemy and I have to admit, that I can wallow in it nicely until a kick in the britches makes me take notice again. My friend on the other hand, stops eating and heads straight for the vodka bottle, and I ask which one is the most destructive reaction?So not only do we all love and grieve, we all have a self destruct button too. Such is the complexity of life.

“Lost and never loved at all” now this is the real stinger in the tail. If we open our hearts to love and be loved and react to the loss of love in a destructive way, what messages are we receiving here? Maybe we shouldn’t love or maybe we should fight to hang on to love. Whichever way is a quandary that I personally never wanted to challenge. However, I will let you in on my own opinion and the way I try to live my life.

I never close doors to anyone who I love or I have lost or have hurt me because I want to savour every moment of my life. I don’t bare grudges, I always try to forgive but it is harder to forget. But most of all if I have loved a person and lost them, I remember that they were once part of my life. Important enough to want to spend time in their company and individual enough to make me want to learn about them.

I have seen many relationships destroyed due to unsolved issues that time could have worked around. So many people tear each other apart to get the upper hand, and yet we once shared our lives with them, worried about them and nurtured their souls.Not just in our own close relationships but in business and friendship, and I know that I look through the world in “rose tinted glasses” but better that way than starting wars and hatred.

Please take the time every day from your busy lives to look at the world that we live in. The power of free speech and thought was given to all of us; I would ask us all to use it, because hatred and war does nothing for any man.