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

Your Verse.

A lot of people wish they were perfect. They destroy themselves reaching for something they can never touch, like a distant memory of a deceased love one. They spend hours pouring their lives into their schoolwork or their job and, when most succeed, do they thank God?

No.

People wish they were perfect. Scientists are a few short years away from completing the Human Genome Project - the mapping of every gene in the human body.

"There is no gene for the human spirit." - Vincent Freeman, Gattaca

Their aim is to create the perfect human... to disregard what God has in mind for us and to create, from scratch, a human life. While curing cancer, AIDs, SIDS, and mental illnesses is a great idea... at what point to you draw the line?

Who decides whether your baby has blue eyes or brown eyes? In fact, who's to say, other than God, what colour eyes they should have?

Scientists say they're doing this to eradicate genetic diseases. But without God, some people would never have existed.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN suffered from Marfan Syndrome, a condition that affects the eyes, ears, nose, cardiovascular muscles and other parts of the human body, eating away at the tissue until there's nothing left. Lincoln became one of the most noted philosophers and presidents to have ever lived.

VINCENT VAN GOGH changed the way the world saw art and perceived it, even though he suffered from epilepsy his whole life.

ALBERT EINSTEIN changed the world literally overnight with his theories. He is the reason we have electricity and math theories today. He suffered from dyslexia.

JOHN F. KENNEDY suffered from Addison's disease, a condition that affects the adrenal gland and causes fever, fatigue, trouble standing, hazy vision, joint and muscle pain and changes in mood and personality. He stopped the Cuban missile crisis dead in its tracks. He's the reason the world isn't a toxic wasteland.

RAY CHARLES ROBINSON changed the way the world perceived music. He suffered from primary glaucoma, a disease that destroys the photoreceptors in a person's eyes, rendering them blind. Robinson continued to compose until five years before his death.

STEPHEN HAWKING is the father of all current knowledge about space, time or otherwise, certifiably the most brilliant person that has ever lived. Stephen Hawking suffers from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, a disease that, much like Motor Neuron Disease, destroys neurons in his body that allow him to move. Diagnosed when he was 22, he was given 3 years to live, at most. 45 years later, he's still putting out theories.

And let's not forget... had genetic engineering been at all possible when our parents were all thinking of conceiving, we might not exist. We could be entirely different people, not happy with ourselves or our lives.

God has a plan for everyone. Whether or not people can see it, it's true. Despite all our physical or mental ailments, He has our lives, our destinies, planned out for us. He loves us and takes care of us in our darkest times. He knows we'll contribute to the fate of the rest of the world.

"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love...these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. That you are here - that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play GOES ON and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?" - John Keating, Dead Poets Society.

God's given you a chance. A chance to write your verse, carve your niche in the world, AS YOU ARE, without PERFECTION, without ACCEPTANCE, really. So what are you going to do? Lament that you're not perfect? Or live in the moment and make your verse as beautiful and as vivid as you possibly can?

Carpe diem.

-a solitary blue.

Carpe Diem. (:

CARPE DIEM.

Translated into English...

SEIZE THE DAY!

When I was a kid I was so terrified of death and everything that came with it. Now I know, however, that it wasn't really death that scared me - I was scared that, in my short life, I wouldn't have enough time to get everything done that I wanted to do, see everything I wanted to see and be everything I wanted to be.

I was frightened because we all have expiration dates of a sort - or at least, our bodies do. Our minds go on. I was scared because there was no such thing as forever - but now, I've come to a very abrupt, sudden realization.

If everything was forever, it would becoming boring, and we would take it for granted. Would we truly appreciate the feel of the sun on our faces if we knew that it was never going to end? Wouldn't it just become another thing that we came to expect from life? Every morning, I wake up and I'm excited, so terribly excited at what I'm going to be doing that day - whether it be school, homework, seeing friends or shopping, or even going to work in this hot weather.

Carpe diem. Seize the day. Live in the moment.

"I went into the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck all the marrow out of life. To put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I had come to die, discover that I had not lived." - Neil, Dead Poets Society.

Seize the day. Be who you want to be, anything you want to be. Live life like the next sixty seconds will be your last. Love like you're never going to get hurt. Breathe every breath and savor the taste of life, because every time you open your mouth that's what you're breathing - you're breathing air that has seen the rise and fall of many a great man and woman, breathing air that's circulated the entire globe and united people all over the world.

Life isn't about staggering around blind to the world's beauties. It's about staggering around blinded BECAUSE you saw them, because you looked upon them and realised how lucky you were to be alive. Life is about taking every day as a precious gift. Life, as it is, isn't about mourning what you don't have.

It's about celebrating what you're given.

"Emmett... my sweet, dear Emmett... mourn the losses, because they're many. But celebrate the victories... because they're few." - Debbie Novotny.

Carpe diem. (:

-a solitary blue