If you’ve ever had the impressive motivation to enter a gym, or wandered around the sports and fitness section of a department store, you’ll probably have seen one of those exercise machines upon which you place each foot on a separate pedal and swing your legs back and forth one after the other.  Their proper name is a ‘gravity strider’ or ‘airwalker’ and they provide the same fitness benefits as a brisk walk; the bonus being that you don’t need to worry about the weather.  You can even position it in front of the t.v and do it whilst you watch The Simpsons, if you really want.  Its really quite novel.

Sometimes, when I see these machines in full swing, they remind me of the motion of our minds a little bit.  Sometimes we are forward thinking in the future, other times we are backwards recalling the past, but seldom are we in the centre – the present.

Ahhh, tenses.  Everybody loves to philosophise over the tenses.  You’ve probably heard dozens of infamous sayings about how important it is to live in today rather than yesterday, or tomorrow.  Even one of the best-selling books of all time (Eckhardt Tolle’s ‘The Power of Now’) was about that very idea.  For many, it is seen as the key to being spiritually sound and happy – and that’s an idea that most people would find extremely hard to refute.  I’m not going to refute it either, though I am going to try and figure out whereabouts in the jigsaw the past and the future really belong.

It seems to me, that most of the time we are thinking about things that happened in the past, or speculating over the things that we think may happen in the future.

“I wish I could go back to…”…. “I wish I hadn’t said such and such” … “I wish I’d done that differently” … “I miss a million people and things”… “Do you remember when we…?”

Sound familiar?

Now how about:

“I can’t wait until…” … “I am going to do that!”… “One day, I’d love to…” … “We should go to…”… “I will…”

If you’re anything like me – the above phrases will be most familiar to you.  You probably have a number of different words you could fit instantly fit into the ellipses.  Its fun isn’t it?  Reminiscing the good times and speculating over the exciting times ahead.  It can also be extremely nauseating – regretting over things you may have done or said which you just can’t change, and never will be able to change, or missing things that you can never re-live that pale in comparison to whatever you’re doing now.  Looking forward can be just as nauseating – you can set out many plans and goals but you can’t be certain that you’ll ever be able to enjoy the glory from them.  A lot of time wastefully invested into thinking about something which might not even happen!

Sometime during the third year of University, we were in the middle of a Criminology lecture which was not the most interesting of all.  In fact, it was so boring, that I cannot recall the proper name of the module nor what topic we were learning about that rainy Friday afternoon in the Marcus Merriman lecture theatre, Lancaster University.  I merely remember being sat with my unkempt, spotty, studentified head face down on the desk in despair,  stomach full of Pot Noodle and Snakebite, trying in vain to battle the zzz’s.  That was until our lecturer, Professor Can’tRememberTheName, used an analogy to describe something which really stuck out in my head as describing a habit that most of us have.  The analogy was that of a boat on an open sea that was being manipulated by several different steering wheels, all trying to steer in different directions.  The result?  The boat stood still, and went nowhere.  See yourself as the boat now, sometimes living in one direction (the past), other times living in the other (the future).  The result?  Staying still, going nowhere.  Could you ever contemplate that a boat and an airwalker and even an human mindset could have so much in common?

The present is the only tense that we are ever assured of having.  Therefore, it needs to be the one which we prioritise.  Yesterday is not the present.  If today is Monday, even the soon to arrive Tuesday is not the present.  Now is the present.  Your eyes on this sentence is the present (I must say, you are using your present wisely at this moment), but now that sentence becomes the past and now this current sentence is the present.  So let’s use it.  Let’s do the things we want to do whilst we know we can.

But where does that put the past?  Where does it put the future?  You definitely need those as well.  Just ask Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens’ ‘Christmas Carol’.  We can only ever put our lives into perspective and make the most of ourselves if we can have visions of all three.  The past is our teacher and Hindsight is that annoying fellow student in class who would start saying the answer to the question just after the teacher had started saying it, and would then pass off the answer as their own with a fraudulent grin.  The past gave us immense pleasure and intolerable pain but still we stand; now with more knowledge, appreciation and wisdom.  The past gave us all of the people we care about and all the qualifications we have.  We would be nowhere without it.  Be careful not to dismiss it.  Though there may be things we don’t like to remember, sometimes it is those things in particular which taught us the most.  Everything we ever did, taught us something, even if it was only trivial like, “don’t hold on too firmly to the escalator handlebar or you’ll spend the rest of the day with traces of hard-to-remove black rubber on your fingers”.   To dismiss any of that just because its not happening right now would make a mockery of everything you ever experienced.

Then too, the future – the one that keeps us facing forwards.  Thinking about the future is what provides us with hope and excitement.  Having a bad day?  TOMORROW WILL BE BETTER.  Though the uncertainty may also scare you, but at least you have the time to try and guide yourself in the direction you want to go in – draw out that map!  Plan your route.  But don’t use it as ‘back-up’ time to fulfil the things in life you really want to fulfil.  There is no tomorrow.  Nobody ever goes there.  Have you ever received a postcard from that golden, heavenly Land known as Tomorrow?

No.

It is today which we have.  Today is all you will ever have.  So let’s really think and understand now that infamous, wise old saying that you might find scrawled in a flowery font on the back of a menu in some kind of new-age, hippy dippy café-bar and lets put our whole heart and souls into it and really…

…Cherish Yesterday

Dream Tomorrow

Live Today…

 There’s no wanting in the present.  There’s no wishing in the present.  There’s no regretting in the present.  There’s only ever living in the present, so let’s not wait any longer to do the things we really want to and lets put the present in its rightful place at centre stage where it cannot be avoided; and the past and the future stored safely and discreetly in the wings for when we need that little bit of perspective or hope.

Song of the Day:   Girl Talk – Down for the Count

Massively under-rated away from the Americas, mash-up D.J Gregg Gillis has been making creating fresh party anthems for masses through ingeniously blending together popular songs in a way that leaves you in a state of absolute awe… Once you’ve stopped dancing, that is.

A few weeks ago I published a post about love.  I wrote about how, as humans, our ultimate desire is to find somebody who we can fall in love with, and share the rest of our lives with.  I stand by that sentiment, but now I’d like to focus on the alternative state of being single.  Is it really so bad to be unattached?

Essentially, being single is something we need to learn not to be afraid of.  Unless you’re lucky enough to have met “your one and only” already, then being single is a state you need to embrace, and even learn to like, as unattractive it may seem compared to the beautiful vision of unearthing your soulmate and falling in love.

It’s strange how one of the things we fear most is essentially the one thing we feel as though we have the least control over – being alone.  Nobody likes to feel alone.  That’s why we have families; that’s why we have friends.  We interact with others because we enjoy sharing stories and laughter with others.  We like having people to care for, who will care for us back.  Without this, we can feel lonely.  We each need the occasional personal space to gather our thoughts, but to be in this state for too long can lead to derealisation – we could lose ourselves in our imaginations.

And there will be days when the lack of a partner hits us harder than normal.  For me, it only takes the vision of a pair of teenagers on the street, loved up and arm and arm, to hit that sensitive spot in my tummy and react, like a metal fork touching a filling, and taunt me, “Why haven’t you found that yet, Sophie?”  “You’re getting older now, Sophie” or even just, “Stupid Sophie who nobody wants yet you’re about twice as old as those lovers”.  It can lead me to remember those visions I used to have as a young child, writing out my dreams in class, “Wen I am 25 I want to b living in a house wiv my husband, 2 chilldren and pet cat”, and then I feel as though I’ve let my infant self down.

However, my past paddles into the world of dating and relationships, which clearly all failed, have reminded me of one thing:  Love is something that we cannot force, and we should not actively look for.  Love is something so beautiful that it should come naturally.  We cannot phone up and order it, like a pizza; and much like a distant vision on the horizon, it does not make its way any closer to us just because we use a pair of binoculars (or *cough* a dating website *ashamed cough*).

We simply have to be patient, and wait, and whilst we do so, we need to find that inner peace in ourselves that says, “Hey, single? So what!” and allows us to continue having fun, and not let us feel inferior because nobody has fallen in love with us yet.  Our eventual spouses will be the ones we have decided we love enough to share the remainder of our lives with, but let’s not forget about all the years of our lives that will have preceded that.  Being single is our natural state from birth, and as humans we are an embodiment of a conscience.  Our conscience is the one person we have in our life who we know will never abandon us – similarly, it is the one person that we can never escape from.  Our conscience knows all of our secrets and all of our thoughts.  It knows much more about you than the person you marry ever will.  When you make a mistake it will be your conscience that makes you feel guilty.  When you try your hardest at something, and nobody else seems to realise, your conscience will be the one person guaranteed to give you a proverbial pat on the back and say, “I saw you trying, even if they didn’t”.  It is yourself, that listens to all of your thoughts and will never tell you to shut up, but it will also be the thing that does not need to be polite when telling you all the things that you have done wrong and what you need to change.

With this in mind – why, when we are single, do so many of us, myself included, pre-occupy ourselves with the disdain of not having found a relationship yet, when even a future partner will not be as understanding of ourselves as…. Ourselves!  A relationship with another stands for nothing if you cannot first enjoy the company of yourself.  We can obsess about finding a relationship out of fear of being alone but listen to your heart – can you hear that quiet voice?  That’s the voice that’s going to guide you, and never going to leave you.  Do you still feel alone?

I may wish for a relationship, but I cannot force it, nor would I want to.  Being single should not be viewed as a negative quality in somebody.  Rather, lets just remember the things we have, and not the things we want, and carry on living each day to the full until the time comes when love will find us.

(Disclaimer:  If still single in 10 years, may look into the laws of marrying plants)

Song of the Day:   Janet Jackson – Love Will Never Do Without You

Emily Hutchison, since you asked, this one is for you!

Good and Bad

Happy and Sad

Up and Down

Smile and Frown

Hello and Goodbye

Laugh and Cry

Don’t worry, the above isn’t meant to be a poetic masterpiece, I was just thinking about how emotions will always be about each of these things – opposites, not to mention all the feelings in between.  We have to be able to familiarise ourselves with all of them, because there are some that we won’t always be able to avoid and the more we can accept to take the rough with the smooth, the better equipped we will be to cope with the things life throws at us (often unexpectedly).

Sometimes, one side may outweigh the other, or be longer in duration.

If things are more to the left-hand side, smile about it, write about it, take a photo of it, be thankful for it, love it and enjoy it.  Then try and spread it to others.

If things are more to the right-hand side, then keep a positive flame burning inside at all times, just the smallest flame can bring some light the darkest cave.  Free yourself of fear and ill-feeling.  Keep your love for those you care about relentless, let it withstand any bad weather and wait for the next sunny day to remind you why you did so.  Keep saying the things you mean, and keep meaning the things you say.  Have belief in all your actions, that’s the only way you’ll never have regrets.

But particularly, remember the rule of opposites – we can only recognise the experience of one side of the diametric if we have experienced, too, the other.  There is no emotion that should be denied.  Embrace them all, and learn from them, they each have something to teach you.

Today’s weather seems to have combined the rule of opposites into one.  Its lovely and sunny, but also pretty windy.  Perfect weather to be catching a bus into London for a few drinks and a lot of dancing.  I love it when friends have birthdays!

Loves.

Song of the Day:

My Last.FM/Spotifying browsing yesterday guided me to this song.  I like it a lot and no doubt it will be the soundtrack of my bus-ride today.

Sometimes, when I tell people that I’m single, they express a degree of surprise that somebody who is 25 is not about to join in with the recent trend of engagements anytime soon.  Their surprise is somewhat understandable.  These are the days when the metamorphosis in human beings from young adults who are just starting their own lives into slightly older adults who are now further along the blueprint of life they composed long ago is becoming more apparent.  With news of each recent engagement, you reminisce the past and think about those moments back in school or University when you and your newly engaged friend would sit together,  as two young and single individuals, and talk together, maybe drink together and exchange your dreams with one another.  It seems like yesterday, but the truth is, it wasn’t, and it starts to make you think in greater depth about your own love life and what direction its heading in.

I have been in relationships, but they never really lasted too long, mainly because I felt like my freedom was being compromised (or maybe I just made a wrong choice).  Yet I know that there are so many couples who don’t have that problem and just manage to co-exist with one another like a set of a Russian dolls – two individuals assembled as one.

That’s what I want from a relationship too.

I don’t dislike being single, in fact, I quite enjoy it sometimes, and so does my bank balance (buy a new dress for myself, or buy some kind of irritating computer game for him that makes an annoying noise and causes him to forget I exist? Hmm) but, I don’t want to remain single forever, so sometimes I sit and think about what it is I’m actually looking for.

The best way to sum it up is that I’m looking for a co-pilot.

He and I sit at the front of the same plane.  We are flying it in the same direction but we will also go on more flights to other destinations too.  We love having passengers (friends and family) on board our plane, but we still have the privacy of the cockpit.  We have dual control over the plane and as such contributions from the both of us are imperative for a safe and successful flight.

He is my co-pilot, and I am his co-pilot too.

I want to find my co-pilot, and I want to go to exciting destinations together with him.

But until I find him, I just have to continue having my own adventures, and then when we finally meet I can tell him all about them, and he can tell me all about his.  Then, we can head towards the runway and take control of the jet that will take us to the rest of their lives.

Then I’ll throw away that “Easy Meals for One” recipe book. 😉

Loves.

Song of the Day:  Lucky Soul – Struck Dumb

Sticking to the romance theme…

People fascinate me.

I can’t pinpoint why exactly, but they just do.

Everybody in the world is different.  There are no two people who look the same, act the same, think the same and live the same.  Even if you did meet somebody who had a similar face, similar ideals, similar history, your two life stories will never be a carbon copy of one another.

But all of us have three things in common-

We’re born
We live
We die

It doesn’t matter how long your life is, or what you spend it doing – you will always go through each of these events.

Just three common events, but billions of variation in between.

Multiple people can experience the same event, but they won’t necessarily feel the same way about it.  It’s obvious, I know, but sometimes, when you really think about it deep down, isn’t it fascinating? How does it happen?

Our mind can be as limitless as the universe, our thoughts and feelings can be as numerous as the stars.  And somehow, just like the ancient astronomers would sit each night looking up to the sky trying to make sense of it, eventually coming up with constellations to relate one star to the next, so too must we, as humans, make sense of our own thoughts.

What is it that makes us feel the way we feel?  Where do these thoughts and opinions really come from?  And whats the process involved in how we begin to give our thoughts the analysis and structure needed to understand them.

Psychology seeks to provide explanations for these questions, but the bare majority of people (myself included) are not psychologists, and so we can’t use the biological and statistical reasonings it teaches to understand our own feelings.  We have to use other more vague and automated mental resources within, and its those that I’m interested in.

Its funny how a fear of fire can turn into a love of it when looking at a sunset.  Its funny how much more value we can attribute to a humble glass of water on a hot, dry day.  You might think that you understand your feelings for something but then, when you have to look at it from another angle, you find that your feelings change.

I write this article in the middle of a period which, for me, has been a long voyage of self-discovery.

I’ve found that the older I’ve got, and the more I’ve seen and learned, the less that I’ve been sure of.

Life surprises me every single day.  It’s somewhat scary yet exciting all at once.

This is a rather deep first entry to the Blog.  I actually have heaps to write about and it won’t all be like this, but I firmly believe that we, as individuals in the modern world, don’t always take the time to step back and switch off the safelight – in other words, try and see things in a different way.  We are so busy in our day to day lives – going to work, filling in forms, arranging our social calendars, that sometimes we forget that we’re here and existing in this limitless universe, and there is so much beyond our daily routine that is out there to discover.

Many interesting things are out there waiting to be found.  Let’s remember that every so often.

Loves.

Song of the Day: Jurassic 5 – Jurass Finish First

Nothing like a bit of old-skool on a spring afternoon