Live, Laugh and Trust Yourself

"As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live" (Goethe)

The Innocent Age (Dan Fogelberg)
http://youtu.be/uunU0Aoup_I

     I have recently been going through some photographs and trying to get them organized into albums. I think it started when my sister asked for some pictures of her as a young child. She told me that she didn't have very many pictures of her from her childhood, and she wondered if there were any in the slides that I had inherited. I found many, as that seemed to be the preferred method of record keeping for my father back in the day. I was able to scan some onto my computer and send them to her. It was fun to see her at that age, as I am the youngest and never remember her during those years. There were some of her laughing and playing, dancing and posing. I was amazed as the happiness and innocence I saw in her face.

     I also found a few pictures of a younger me in the slides. It was fun to scan those and see what I looked like so many years ago. As I looked into the eyes of that toothless 5 year old, I was hit by the innocence and pure joy that I saw in my face at that young age.  There were some of me with my two siblings by my sides, holding my hands. A favorite is of me mimicking my sister's pose, our brother by my side, with a shot of a great canyon opening up behind us. I continued to look through the photos, and it seems that as I got older the joy and innocence disappeared from my face and the pictures reflected more seriousness and forced smiles. I was the youngest of three children, with mother that had a rheumatic heart condition who underwent 5 open heart surgeries in my life time. I think that the weight of growing up with those challenges showed on my face at times.

      Then I started compiling some photographs of my husband from his babyhood through about age 19. I wanted to put together a photographic "This is Your Life" for him to be able to see what has happened over his lifetime as he is approaching his 50th birthday. What a cute baby and young child he was! So much energy and lust for life. He was so loving and solicitious of his younger siblings (he is the oldest in his family). And how sweetly he interacts with his mother. Is it any wonder why I love him? As I went through these photos I saw events that occurred in his life that I was not a part of because we met in his young adult years. I learned more about who he was, what he valued and what his family valued as I saw the interactions in these photos.

     Finally, I then went through some more photos of our life together that I have been meaning to scrapbook over these past many years. In these photos I found pictures of each of our children at various ages and stages of life. It brought back a flood of memories of what life was like when they were younger. I remembered how we interacted with each other and what fun we had back then! I wondered how they view their "growing up" years, now that most of them are grown up and on their own.

    I think it is so sad how we often lose the love for life and the simple joy that we carried with us when we were children, or even when we had young children. Of course we all have to grow up, but it saddens me to lose the innocence and trust in myself that I had so strong when I was a child. I seemed to really know who I was back then. We all seemed to know what we loved, where we belonged, what we wanted to do, what we wanted to be (or at least we thought we did). We didn't care much about what was going on around us, as long as we were safe, well fed and loved. Thoughts of things like wars, death, taxes, financial worries or relationship challenges were the farthest things from our thoughts back then.

     But, life goes one and we grow with it. It is nice to be able to look back and reminisce about those times. I like to think that it doesn't mean that there can't be happy, fun times now. I guess it's all in the way we choose to look at things and in the way we choose to live our life. It's about choices after all, isn't it? I think it's a matter of really knowing ourselves and not losing ourselves, our true selves, along the sometimes rocky roads of life. Sometimes it takes things like looking at old photographs - looking at where we have been - to see how far we have come. Deep down we still have elements of those children inside of us, it's just that now we are trapped in adult bodies. Can we still reclaim the joy and fun of life? I think we can if we chose to look for it. Perhaps if we had more simple, innocent fun more frequently there would be a lot less incidents of suicide in middle age!

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/43714272/ns/today-today_health/t/suicide-spikes-among-middle-aged-women/

     The best years don't have to be behind us. The best can be yet to come. I think a lot of it depends on our point of view and our attitude. As we learn to love ourselves again, we can be our own best friend. It's a matter of trusting ourselves to know what we need; to not being afraid to ask for it and/or go out and get it. We can choose to give up and give in to life, or we can choose to keep going - to look for and find the joy and the fun. Try new things, get out of our comfort zones and be more than we are now. Life doesn't have to end at 30 or 40 or 50 or whenever, as long as we don't give up. It gives new meaning to the term "enduring to the end". The future looks bright when you chose to look on the bright side of life (Thank you, Monty Python ;-)). As a good friend used to always say, "Happiness is a choice". Yes, I guess it really is.

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (Monty Python - of course)
http://youtu.be/JrdEMERq8MA