Too Young

Senior picture high school

Last week I went with my son to two funerals of young people. It was heartbreaking and eye opening for both of us. One of the kids was someone he had played basketball with just before ‘the accident’. It was sad and gut-wrenching to be surrounded by parents, siblings, and friends who lost a loved one who was way too young. When we are young we look at our future with immense possibilities, the world is our oyster but when faced with sudden illness or even death, we begin to realize that there is only a finite amount of time and we don’t know the day or hour when that time is up.

Coincidentally my daughter brought out and started reading my journal from when I was 17 last week. We read certain parts together which made me laugh. I used terms like ‘suck my big left toe’, ‘stuck up’,’grody’,’foxy’…it was fun to read it with her. The overwhelming theme of my journal from my junior/senior year of high school was despite the not so fun parts of high school, I had hope and excitement for the future. I recently started mentoring a new cancer survivor through one of the cancer organizations I work with who is struggling with the emotions of being a ‘survivor’. It’s a place hard to describe and probably similar to surviving a trauma of any kind including a sudden death of someone close. I told him you feel more, hurt more, love more, realize what’s most important, who’s most important, where you want to spend your time and with whom. The toxic things in your life are magnified and that includes people, jobs, habits, and all you want to do is be done with those and live. It’s a lot of stuff and of course you add to that the feeling that life is really fragile.

Are we too future focused? What about today and being grateful with now. When I was really young I wanted to be a teen, then as a teen, I wanted to be 21, and then at 21 I wanted to graduate college and be an adult who had a job that paid for the things I wanted. Well, here I am at 40+ wanting to go backward a little so I can enjoy life a little more in my youth. In my last pages of my high school journal I spoke of fear for the future along with anticipation of what the future holds, but maybe hoping the future would be so much better or more exciting than the present took some of the joy out of the now. Let’s not do that. Life is fleeting and no one knows what tomorrow brings. ‘You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.’~Henry David Thoreau

Today I wear Christopher Kane for Nars Lipgloss in Glow Pink because it’s beautiful. Cheers!

Tags: Anna Warner, beauty, breathing, cancer survivor, friendship, hope, inspiration, life lessons, lipgloss, lipstick journey, motherhood, My Lipstick Journey Through Cancer, relationships, thyroid, thyroid cancer survivor