The reason, season or lifetime....

Have you ever noticed how people weave in and out of our lives? Most times they are in our lives for a Reason; a Season; a Lifetime. When we figure out which it is we seem to know exactly what to do.

When someone is in our life for a REASON, it is usually to meet a need we have expressed outwardly or inwardly. They have come to assist us through a difficulty, to provide us with guidance and support, to aid us physically, emotionally or spiritually. They may seem like a godsend and they absolutely are! Whether we know it or not they are here for the exact reason we need them to be. Then without any wrong-doing on our part or at an inconvenient time, this person will say or do something to bring the relationship to an end. Sometimes they die. Sometimes they walk away. Sometimes they act up or out and force us to take a stand. What we must realise is that our need has been met and our desire fulfilled; their work is done. The prayer we sent up has been answered and it is now time to move on.

When people come into our life for a SEASON, it is because our turn has come to share, grow or learn. They may bring us an experience of peace or make us laugh. They may teach us something we have never done. They usually give us an unbelievable amount of joy. Believe it! It is real! But, only for a SEASON.

LIFETIME relationships teach us lifetime lessons; those things we must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation. Our job is to accept the lesson; love the person; and put what we have learned to use in all other relationships and areas of our life. It is said that love is blind but friendship has a special sense.

“True friends are like diamonds precious and rare!”

Author – unknown.

This has to be one of my favourite quotes/poems….

If I have to look back and see all those who have come and gone for a reason, I am saddened but also so incredibly grateful.

Those who are for a season only are sometimes the most difficult to let go of because they have changed your life in such a special way YET you have to be willing to let them go, because, they were only there for that season in your life!

A lifetime, now these are the hardest to accept because they know the depths of your soul, the black and the white of you and they force you to change and become more of the white by asking the tough questions and prodding those bits that are the worst of you….hard relationships that test you daily BUT they make you a better person in the end!

As a chapter draws to a close in my life, and it has been the most incredible experience, I am reminded of this poem and wonder as to which I have been living – the reason, season or lifetime.

Either way, the door closes to allow for a new reason, season or lifetime and although my heart is broken I look forward expectantly to the latest chapter….

Eat, Pray, Love - thoughts!

I recently watched Eat, Pray, Love again, based on the book by Elizabeth Gilbert and was amazed at the wealth of wisdom encapsulated in one movie/book on love lost and found and the experiences we have between old love lost and new love found.

We have all had this experience at least once in our lifetime and most, probably many more!

Very few are lucky enough to escape its clutches and those that profess that they haven’t had this experience, haven’t because they have chosen to cut themselves off from love.  They cut themselves off to protect themselves; don’t put themselves out there to feel that pain of loss, the hollowness of loneliness or the abundant joy of love.  They feel better this way and that’s there choice, probably we have all tried this as a plan of action ourselves when the hurt has been too much to try!

What am I banging on about today?

Love lost!

Yip that paralysing feeling when the one you love or thought you loved has left.  It doesn’t really matter whose idea it was to start with, it doesn’t even matter whether that love was ever reciprocated, all that matters is that you are now alone, no one to love and no one to love you!

Advice from — Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)

"When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings."

I talk of that feeling that gnaws at your heart, day in and day out, that constricts it like a boa constrictor would around its prey, you feel like you can’t take a breath and if you do it is ragged and a painful reminder of the hurt….this is the feeling of loss, the pain of missing someone so much that you can’t breath or loving someone so much that it is so unbearable you don’t want to carry on with the life any longer.  Some will say I am exaggerating but most will see it as the truth.

Advice from - Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)

Wise Richard from Texas counsels Liz who misses her boyfriend.

“I love him,” she pleads. “I miss him.”

“So miss him,” Richard responds. “Send him light and love every time you think of him and drop it.” (

Later, Liz holds her ex-husband in her thoughts. She holds him with love and release.  And feels his pain.

“I really did love you,” she tells him.

“I know,” he replies.

“But I still love you. I miss you.

“So love me,” says Liz in her wise Richard voice. “Miss me. … and then drop it.”

Feel the feelings. Don’t pick up the story. That’s what being awakes about.

It won’t last forever. Nothing does.

Have you ever had that experience where you believe you have met your soul mate and for some reason, incomprehensible to you, he/she has not recognised this truth?  Next time maybe think again, was that person, who you believed was ‘the one’ truly your soul mate, if he/she was, you have been lucky…and are probably even luckier that they have come and gone in your life, because you have learnt a hard lesson through them, but living with them would be nothing short of painful!  A partner for life will probably not be your soul mate BUT they can be ‘the one’!  Now how do we distinguish the difference, the one is there to love you simply for who you are, the other is there to love you BUT will tell you the truth about you!  That truth that hurts, that truth so deep inside you think no one will ever notice it….shew this is pretty deep stuff!

Advice from - Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)

People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.

A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.

A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life.”

Further wisdom from Eat, Pray, Love for you to ponder and comment on…

"This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.”

Does the experience of having a broken heart mean this, better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all….hmmm I am not so sure!  Honestly I would trade the feeling of love lost for almost anything, I just wish there was a magic switch and then it wouldn’t matter whether we had lost, had hurt, or the reverse where we had given someone else up and shattered their world with loss and hurt!  Perhaps in hindsight the world wouldn’t be a very kind place if we could just switch our emotions on and off, willy nilly! (Still I sure would take it, if it was on offer, versus the debilitation of loss and hurt.)

“To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced life."

This is a gem – it IS better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all!  This is all part of life and we should desire to experience it ALL for what it is.  Cutting ourselves off may protect us today from hurt and pain and loss BUT it will also shield us from joy, love, being loved and happiness!

“Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.”

"Groceries, you need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select what clothes you're gonna wear every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That's the only thing you should be trying to control. Drop everything else but that. Because if you can't learn to master your thinking, you're in deep trouble forever."

So true!  So now what?  I am sure that this is what I have just been saying about having a switch, that’s all I would want to switch off – those paralysing moments when your emotions take over your life.  Ever had that where you can’t think, breath, speak without having to say that persons name in your mind…that’s why I love the quote above, so miss me, so love me, send light and love to me and DROP IT!  If only it was so easy……Shew and CONTROL well that’s me.  I can be in control of every emotion when I ‘have to be’ and then so out of control when I am alone that it frightens me….like I am the most hardcore chick on the planet and yet I am so incredibly vulnerable to my emotions and thoughts from those emotions that I can barely keep it together.

“Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation”

Oh good one.  So you have to feel and experience the misery of loss and hurt and then ‘hey presto’ it’s all better!  OK so I have felt the hurt and pain, enough already – when do I get transformation?

“Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people.”

Another gem, thanks very much!  So I am the only obstacle to my own happiness – is that what this is saying?  I am so miserable I am getting in my own way!  Great so hand me that switch and I choose happiness today…..if only it was that easy!

So in the end we have this –

“I've come to believe in something I call "The Physics of the Quest." A force in nature governed by laws as real as the laws of gravity.

The rule of Quest Physics goes something like this: If you're brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting, which can be anything from your house to bitter, old resentments, and set out on a truth-seeking journey, either externally or internally, and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher and if you are prepared, most of all, to face and forgive some very difficult realities about yourself, then the truth will not be withheld from you.”

So I ask – what is your truth?

What is my truth?

Are we ready to throw caution to the wind to find it?  To leave everything and I mean EVERYTHING behind, all past hurt, pain, resentment, fear and rejection, can you?  Because if you can, according to this, we will find our truth.

Are you willing to regard EVERYTHING that happens, EVERYONE you chance to meet and EVERY clue along this path of enlightenment as a teacher along the way?

If so your truth will NOT be withheld from you.

Nothing in this Universe happens once

You will have to forgive me, I wrote it late Sunday night so it may be a bit melodramatic, BUT the core of the piece still remains, does nothing in this Universe only happen once?

My favourite series is called Bones, about a forensic anthropologist, I have all the series available and I watch them, like most of my DvDs over and over.  Today something struck me during one of the volumes – nothing in this universe happens just once!

Quote from The Skull in the Desert:

Angela: [...] I'm a little afraid that... I'm just afraid that I don't have a generous heart. I'm afraid that I won't have the chance that I had with Kirk ever again.
Brennan: You will.
Angela: How can you be so sure?
Brennan: Because nothing in this universe happens just once, Angela. Nothing. Infinity goes in both directions. There's no unique event, no singular moment.
Angela: (laughs) I don't know what that means.

Basically Angela is asking – will she find love again?

And Brennan is saying – absolutely because nothing in this universe happens only once!

It made me think, is it true that nothing will happen once and thus do we always get a second chance.

This can be a positive thing and a negative thing I guess.

The fact that true love can happen more than once in a lifetime is good news or is it?

Doesn’t the fact that you could find your true love, your soul mate, more than once in a lifetime dilute the first?

Or does it provide hope to those that have lost love, those whose love is not reciprocated, those whose love moved on, those whose love time ran out on?

If infinity goes in both directions does that mean that old love can return?  Or that a once rejected love can be accepted? 

Or does it just mean that because of the cycle of life that even after love, a devastating ‘heart ache’, one that you thought you would never recover from, if enough time passes you just get over it, because that is the cycle of life?

I’m not sure that this works for me….surely we want true love to last forever, like in the fairytale, ‘and they lived happily ever after’.

There’s no unique event.  No singular moment.

Now I really don’t get this surely individuals have one-of-a-kind experiences?

I can’t imagine that I can have a specific experience more than once or that someone else could have that same unique, individual experience?

So in a way I get it and in another I don’t, and yet another I am not sure I want to, expect to comfort myself, such that Angela did, that love will come again – or can it only come again if you have experienced it for real at least once?

I am not sure that I have had the first experience of love – if love is that emotion that is reciprocated and you love as if a prince and princess in the fairytale?  I know that I have loved but not sure that I have loved and been loved in return, at the same moment in time.

Does this mean it will never happen OR that it will happen but over and over again in my lifetime?

Obviously this could apply to any and all experiences, feelings, emotions, situations etc etc etc…..