Posts in category: Quotes

We had a bit of a clear up at the weekend.  In preparation for a new bed arriving this week, we dismantled our old one.  Which meant I had to clear out all the stuff that had been stashed underneath it.

One of the boxes that was under there was packed to the brim with photos.  And not just any photos.  These are the wallet-sized ones you used to get when you had your film developed using Tripleprint.  Does anyone else remember them?!

I could have so happily tipped the whole box out and spent the day lost in memories.  Just looking at a few of them I was instantly taken back to sun-drenched days in the south of France, recalling the various voices and accents of the new friends we made on holiday there.

And that’s what I love so much about photography.  It captures a moment in time that might otherwise be forgotten. The faces of those fleeting holiday friendships would otherwise all fade over time.  But in a photo they are held forever.

I think this quote by Dorothea Lange says it beautifully.

Life isn’t meant to stand still.

By it’s very nature it is constantly moving, evolving.

But a photo lets us change that.  It gives us a means by which we can hold life still for a while.  Freeze a moment so that we can go back to it.

Which is an amazing gift in my opinion.

I was taking photos at a baby sale/fair in Swansea at the weekend, and got chatting to a lovely girl called Cheryl who runs a local business offering various massage therapies.

We were discussing how things like massage and reflexology aren’t for everyone, because some people just aren’t comfortable with it, and she told me a story about how she happily lay down on the beach on holiday once and had a massage in front of everyone, while her friends were really uncomfortable with the idea.

She said her friends thought she was mad for doing it, and then she commented that she’d rather be a bit mad than be boring – because life is too long to boring!

I just burst out laughing when she said it!

You always hear about how life’s too short to be this/do that/worry about the other, I just love this idea that it’s actually too long to be anything other than completely, unapologetically yourself, even if other people think you’re a bit crazy at times!

I can’t imagine many people looking back at their life and thinking, “I wish I’d been more boring!”, can you?!

I love quotes.  The fact that I have a category on this blog just for quotes kind of tells you how much I love quotes!  I could browse the quotes part of Pinterest for hours, reading, laughing, welling-up.

And I really love it when I come across quotes I haven’t heard before that really speak to me.  This is one of those quotes;

“What if, instead of thinking about solving your whole life, you just think about adding additional good things.  One at a time.  Just let your pile of good things grow”

So often, when we’re not entirely happy with our lives, or just have a nagging feeling that it’s not as amazing as it could be, we look to change everything.  We thing about making radical changes.  We end relationships.  We quit jobs.  We spend hours browsing estate agent’s websites looking for a new place to live.

Maybe what we should do instead is be grateful for what we do already have, and then just slowly add good things to it.  Rearrange our schedules to fit in a date night with our partner once a week.  Spend time exploring hobbies that make our hearts sing and see if that leads to a change in career.  Buy a lovely bunch of flowers to brighten up the home we already have.

Sometimes radical changes are what we need. Sometimes we need to take a huge leap and make major changes.  But more often we end up overwhelmed and paralysed when we thing about changing too much at once.  Maybe if we just add good things to our lives, one by one, they’ll build up to the big change that we were after.  Or maybe all those good things will make us realise that we didn’t even need a big change, we just needed to nurture and add to what we already had in our lives.

Either way, I really like this idea.

Just let your pile of good things grow!

There’s an advert on tv at the moment.  I can’t for the life of me tell you what it’s for, just that it features the song ‘raindrops keep falling on my head’.

And as a result I’ve found myself singing the song a fair bit in the last few days.  It reminds me of primary school – I’m pretty sure we sang it in our choir!  Back then the lyrics didn’t mean that much, it was just a fun song to sing. Now though, the lyrics start to take on a bit more meaning.  Especially this line:

It just seems to fit so perfectly with all my current attempts to see the positive side of things.

The rain will come.  Bad things will happen.  But complaining about them won’t change it.  It won’t make it better.  Well, it might make us feel better for a little while!  But there comes a point where we have to decide that the complaining is just useless.  For one it keeps us in a place of weakness.  The rain is happening TO us.  We are passive in the situation.

What we really need to do is take back our power.  We can’t stop the rain, but we can stop our negative thinking about it.  We can find the positives in the situation.  There is always, always something to be thankful for.

There is a post I read once on Pinterest that I just love:

It’s all the same message really.  We can complain.  We can sit and cry.  We can shout at the Universe for being so unfair.

Or we can embrace the situation.

Look for the good.

Find a solution.

Dance in the rain and go kick some walls down!

I am a big fan of Sarah Millican.  I think she’s one of the funniest comediennes out there at the moment.  Have you ever seen her on ‘Would I lie to you’?  She’s just brilliant on it!

So when I came across a list of quotes from her the other day I was really happy, and loved reading through it and having a giggle.

There was one quote though that stood out for me – “Don’t wait for a light at the end of a tunnel.  Stomp on down there and turn the fucker on yourself”.

I’d never heard this quote from her before and I just love it!

I’m a big believer in the idea that things will generally work out for the best.  That things will be ok.  That life is basically good.  The problem with this is that I can often become a bit passive in life.  It’s so easy to just wait for that light at the end of the tunnel, to wait to be rescued or to wait for what we want to come to us.

This quote is a great reminder to me that sometimes you have to actively go after what you want – you have the power to take control and rescue yourself.  I know that sometimes it’s not that simple, but a lot of the time it really can be.

It might take a bit of work and a bit of effort to figure out where the switch is, but you have it in you to put that effort in and turn that damn light on for yourself!

Knowing that it probably won’t last forever doesn’t really help at the time though, and I’ve been finding myself feeling really cranky about it, annoyed that this little person is dragging me out of my comfy bed way before I would choose to be up.  I’m especially annoyed if she wakes me up mid-dream because it leaves me feeling so spaced out all morning.

When my day starts with those feelings, they tend to lead to more bad feelings.  I like to feel in control and quickly feel irritated that I’m not in control of something so basic as the time of day that I wake up.  I want to have a few minutes peace to make a coffee first thing, but find I have to deal with various demands for  milk and entertainment before I can get my caffeine fix.

I hear myself some mornings when I’m tired, snapping at the children to just be patient, to just wait a minute, and I really don’t like what I hear.  That’s when I take a step back and bring it all back into focus.  I remind myself how lucky I am, and how fleeting these early years really are, how it won’t be long before I’m not needed so much and that I’ll probably miss these days then.  I remember how much I really have to be thankful for.

To be woken by a child calling for Mummy, and for that word to mean them.  To be tired because they were needed in the night and again in the early morning for cuddles and comfort.  To not even be able to go to the toilet alone because there was a child that loved and needed them so much they didn’t want to leave their side.

I so desperately wanted my children and  I am so, so thankful that I have them.  I remember when I was struggling in the first week at home after having my son, the thing that helped put it in perspective was thinking how lucky I was that I got to bring him home.

Parenting is damn hard work.  I have my moments of utter frustration with being a Mother, when I just want a moment to myself.  My children can leave me exhausted and drained of all I have to give.  But ultimately, when all is said and done, I am thankful.  I am thankful for 5.30 wake up calls.  I am thankful for disturbed nights.  I am thankful for the hundreds of times I hear ‘Mummy’ every day.

Because it means I am one of the lucky ones.