Friday, July 11, 2014

Since this is one of the last posts I will be putting up before both my second fund-raising run and my birthday, I thought I would take the opportunity to get this important message in. 

If by any chance you were going to get me a gift this year (even those of you planning to buy me hand cream- you know who you are), can I suggest that you direct a cash equivalent here instead: http://www.justgiving.com/user/47235534 
Anything at all will be very much appreciated and will make my 21st birthday even more special than usual. 

Of course, if you have already donated, there is no compulsion to donate again and you will still be invited to my happy birthday party on the 14th when we can all get together and travel back to the year 1994 when I last had one. What I will say is that it will be lots of fun; I was way cute back then. 

In other news, I am fairly certain my calf muscles are going to gather up some of the other nearby muscles and give me another surprise gift of excruciating post-run pain for my birthday (they think this is funny for some reason) But! little do they know that this time I will be better prepared and fully intend to foil their evil little plans, with a little help from my new friend Deep Heat. (You may meet him at the party, he smells a bit funny but has a great personality) 

Like George Bush Jr once said and I quote: There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on, umm..shame on you. Fool me, umm.. you can't fool me again. 

2 days until raceday! Wish me luck. Thanking you and good night.
I've often marvelled at that ineffable feeling of euphoria I feel when I've just watched a particularly inspiring film, read an uplifting novel, or listened to a remarkable sermon or piece of music. Perhaps you have experienced this yourself. For a few minutes following any of the above, I feel like I'm floating a few feet off the ground. The sky seems bluer, the air seems cleaner and life seems altogether more special. And yet, after those first few minutes have passed, I lapse once more into a sort of routine normalcy. I am, for the most part, fully aware of this transition from the lofty to the mundane; and yet I am powerless to stop it. 

What is it that makes us indifferent to the magic of the present moment? All around us are miracles recently performed, wishes that have already come true; people and places and all manner of things that ought to inspire awe and wonder.Why then are we often aware of these only in orchestrated moments of heightened awareness? 

I remember a friend once telling me that when he was preparing to leave a city he had always felt ambivalent towards, he suddenly began to notice the things he would miss when he left. It seems to me that this could just as easily become how life is lived as well; its fleeting, heart-breaking beauty becoming fully apparent only when it's too late to enjoy it. 

Imagine, then. Imagine you could take those beautiful moments, so few and far between now, and stretch them until they're the norm. Imagine if you truly believed, both in yourself and in people around you. Imagine if you thought of each dream as a self-fulfilling prophesy. Imagine if you lived like it could all be gone tomorrow. Try and imagine all that, and then imagine what today would be like. It's worth doing, I think.