What...is life?

"I felt my lungs inflate with the inrush of scenery - air, mountains, trees, people. I thought 'This is what it is to be happy.'"

- Sylvia Plath

Hey guys! I know, I know, it's been over a month since my last post. I'm sorry. College and whatnot has been consuming all my time. My next post is going to be tips on coping with exam stress for those it concerns. But for now, I want to share with you some of my thoughts concerning life.

I think life is always hard because we're always looking for the negativities. When we're kids, we hate life because we're too little to watch the movies we want to watch and to wear the clothes we want to wear and we just seem to be too young for everything good in life and we desperately long to be teenagers who seem tall and independent and beautiful. When we're teenagers, we hate life because we'd built it up in our heads and it did not meet our expectations. We don't feel tall and independent and beautiful, we feel tiny and insignificant and unstable and we're paranoid everyone's judging our spots and our hair and our clothes when of course, nearly everyone else is staring in the mirror, feeling exactly the same as we are.

We long to be adults when we'll be composed and settled and our hormones will no longer be playing havoc with our appearance and we'll lose all that teenage awkwardness. When we're adults, we hate life because it's not how we imagined it. Maybe your spots will disappear - but, for some (me) they won't. Maybe you will lose your teenage awkwardness - but there's no guarantee (me again). And, on top of that, there's so many responsibilities. Bills to pay, jobs to find, expectations to live up to. Whether you're 18 or 28, you're never truly ready to lose the support net of your family and try to fend for yourself in this world of new responsibilities pressing down on your shoulders. We spend our whole lives wanting more independence, more freedom, then when we finally get it, we want nothing more than to run home and have someone look after us like we're little again, with no fears about bills and jobs and relationships and all the scary adult stuff we thought we wanted, eons ago.

Too depressing?

Life isn't all doom and gloom, I guess. I mean, cats exist. As does chocolate. And music. And literature. And cold ice creams on hot summer days. And warm duvets with hot cocoa in the middle of winter, as a blizzard outside covers everything with snow as fresh as a new page in your sketchpad. Friends exist. Hot bubblebaths exist. Scented candles exist. Soft pillows and welcoming duvets at the end of a long day exist. The aromas of newly cut grass, your favourite dinner, freshly baked cakes, sweet flowers...they exist. Life is difficult and unless you're extremely lucky, there will always be something you'll struggle with - even if it's just long division which I promise you has no application in real life. But if you appreciate the little things that seem so miniscule and unimportant, you can get through the tough times and gradually, they'll get easier. You'll learn how to cope.

You'll always have days where you wake up and just want to go back to sleep. You'll always have nights where you lie awake, fretting about everything and nothing before falling into a fitful sleep, plagued by nightmares. I'm not going to pretend all your problems will magically disappear. But if you focus on the good times - nostalgic memories, the beauty around you and all the amazing times you've yet to experience - life is just that bit easier to deal with.

And I promise you that it's worth it.