Let It Go

Has anybody ever had that moment where they're talking about something they're really passionate about (anything from religion and life to cars and dolls) and someone rolls their eyes at you and says you're "too passionate" to be heard?

They're wrong.

Passion is a word that can be defined as anything. You can say you're a passionate person... which, in some areas, I think we all are. Even the drug addled homeless person has opinions that burn within them like a blaze of glory, but they're never heard. Why? Because people don't listen. That's everyone's biggest flaw. It seems like people in general are never listening when you need them. We just go about our lives, thinking of ourselves and only ourselves.

I tried to quit at work last week... and I couldn't. I couldn't physically walk over to my boss and calmly explain that she was the cause of me quitting and that I wouldn't be coming in anymore. Why? It wasn't for some selfish exploit for money (which at first I thought it was) and it wasn't because I was afraid of standing up to her.

No, it was because every Saturday morning a little old woman comes in who can barely walk who relies on me to do her shopping because she's blind. She relies on me to load her trolley with the cheapest things and stack different things in different bags and help her load them into a taxi. If I'm not there to do it who's going to? This woman has worked her whole life raising seven children who all went on to become doctors and lawyers. Now, they've moved away... and forgotten her.

I realised I was passionate about helping people. I wanted her to have the stability of knowing that when she comes to do her shopping at ten in the morning I'll be there waiting to help her. I'm making someone's life a lot easier. She told me once I was her guardian angel.

So I'm passionate about living life to the fullest. I don't want a Nobel Prize, and Academy Award, a Brownie for football. I don't want to be remembered for how many books I sold, how many houses I lived in, how long I spent addicted to crack or meth, how long each of my consecutive marriages lasted.

I want to be remembered for what I did. I want to be remembered as the girl who always tried, even if she never succeeded, she gave it a go. I want to be remembered for how, why and what I created; I want to be remembered by the people I help and I want to go down in history not as someone particularly famous, but as a person who didn't care about fame.

Every second you spend angry or upset is another second of happiness you'll never get back. Forget the bad. You know yourself. You know who you are. I know I'm seventeen and I love clothes and have a bit of a thing for kids' shows. But there's more to me than what people can see - I also know that I'm kind, that I can give, that movies and music and literature set me alight with passion because there's always truth behind the fiction. I know that I have a fire burning inside of me that can't be put out and voice that can't be silenced because I believe in myself, and God believes in me. I can do anything, I can be anyone I want. I could climb the tallest mountain or fly over the highest cloud.

And so can everyone else. We all have different roads that we can take. In fact, there are so many twists and turns and tiny little country pathways and huge city highways in our proverbial future that almost the whole thing is a slab of concrete waiting for us to traverse. But in between those roads are the empty fields and little patches of sand, untouched or destroyed by others.

So what are you going to make of them? Will you build a skyscraper and climb to the top of the world? Will you plant a field of flowers? Will you build the homeless man a house, the sick woman a hospital, fill another with people for a friendless person? Or will you take the land for yourself and live lonely?

I'd fill those fields with my passion. I'd fill them with churches, libraries, theatres, music stores as far as the eye could see. I've never known anything to inspire people more than coming together to celebrate these things.

What will you put in your field?

[You were standing in the wake of devastation
When you were waiting on the edge of the unknown
With the cataclysm raining down, insides crying save me now
You were there, impossibly alone

Do you feel cold and lost in desperation
You build up hope but failure's all you've known
Remember all the sadness and frustration
And let it go, let it go

And in the burst of light that blinded every angel
As if the sky had blown the heavens into stars
You felt the gravity of temper grace falling into empty space
No one there to catch you in their arms

Let it go, let it go, let it go]

-A Solitary Blue