Paris Alive!

It is already three years, this June, that M and I were in Paris celebrating my 40th birthday. How can that be?

The years move with ever increasing speed. The days spill over into weeks and months. And then we are almost half way through the year.

This is one of the reasons I am so grateful that I have eventually learnt to live in the present. For a large part of my life I have lived in the future. The purpose of today was to move me on to tomorrow.

Today I live knowing that what happens or does not happen today is going to follow me into tomorrow or the day after that or the one after that. What isn't resolved today will plague me tomorrow. What isn't faced head on now will hinder me and hold me back later.

The younger we are the less we realise this; we assume each day is independent of the next. We ignore problem issues or, worse still, don't even know they are there. We think they will all disappear with time. They don't and they won't. They just lie low and when you least expect it, like in your late thirties, they rise up and smack you straight in the face.

Now you can smack it right down again, wipe your bloodied nose and stay indoors until your black eye has healed. But you're guaranteed to get another black eye and bloodied nose. Smack it down often enough, out of retaliation, fear or ignorance, and you're guaranteed to spiral into a black hole of depression.

Now what has all this got to do with the Eiffel Tower, glitteringly beautiful in the dark? Nothing really. It's just where my thoughts went. Yet that trip three years ago, a loving gift from my husband, was a salve on a wound, a breath of life to new dreams and a call to engage the present.