New Beginnings

There comes a day in everyone’s life (usually about every three days or so in mine) where just about everything seems to be going wrong. The tube is delayed, you spill coffee all over yourself on the day you decide to wear the crisp white shirt you soaked for hours in blue soap, your boss decides to demote you to cane cutter status and makes you work until stupid o’clock, and then you come home hungry, only to realize that the entire contents of your fridge amount to soggy, old lettuce and an egg. Sounds familiar? Ok, maybe not. I accept that my life operates in its own prism, with its primary purpose to create entertainment for all mankind. However, we’ve all had bad days, or bad periods, where nothing seems to be going right, and you begin to wonder if there really is a worldwide Jedimindtrick conspiracy against you.

It’s been one of those periods for me. I freely admit that I did succumb to the despair, and spent a few days brooding (ok, a week, but who’s counting?). I was one of those people you talk about. I had become a parody in a slapstick American movie, eating copious amounts of junk food and crying at the end of each episode during a Grey’s Anatomy marathon. This, my friends, is what we can safely label - a rut (and a pretty pathetic, calorie accumulating one at that). So one morning, I woke up, and instead of jumping out of bed at the first sound of my alarm, I rolled over and stared up at the ceiling. I ignored the yampie in my eye. I embraced the silence, and I laid very still. And then it came to me. Well, two things came to me. The first, and more minor of the two was the realization that I was starting to look like the bag lady who wanders up and down my high street, and that I should probably reacquaint myself with a comb and makeup. The second, and arguably more profound thought (depending on if you’ve ever seen me after a few days without the use of a comb and makeup) was this – you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. Yes, big surprise, my profound thought was closely linked to food. Work with me here. The point is, if your life is going well, you probably don’t see the need to change anything , unless of course, you’re the most recent lottery powerball winner, in which case, your life is just one big party. For the rest of us mere, unlucky mortals, we often become caught up in a daze of stagnation. And, there would be no agitation to progress towards self-actualization without a series of unfortunate events (you know, like multiple coffee spills in a 24 hour period, and a nasty fall down the escalator in the tube station in the same said 24 hour period). It is at that this point, you realize that something needs to change, and that’s where the change begins. Sometimes, in order to make something beautiful (like a wonderful omelette with cheese, mushrooms, tomatoes, and some coriander for added flavour), bad stuff needs to happen first.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, in his book, Love in the Time of Cholera wrote: Human beings are not born once and for all on the days their mothers give birth to them. Life obliges us over and over again to give birth to ourselves. It’s never too late to start over, to see the world with fresh eyes, and to start making changes in your life. New beginnings are always necessary, if only to allow you to see the humour of being squished up against a man on the tube who clearly has not acquainted himself with deodorant, while you’re late for work because of a delay, knowing all the while that he’s going to discover a very curious lipstick stain on his shirt when he gets to work.