“Our lives are not deter­mined by what hap­pens to us but by how we react to what hap­pens, not by what life brings to us, but by the atti­tude we bring to life. A pos­i­tive atti­tude causes a chain reac­tion of pos­i­tive thoughts, events, and out­comes. It is a cat­a­lyst, a spark that cre­ates extra­or­di­nary results.”

I once took a short cre­ative writ­ing course and we were asked to describe our­selves in one short sen­tence. I puz­zled over that for days and by the time for next week’s class came, I still had no idea how to describe myself in so few words. As I was walk­ing up the stairs it sud­denly came to me;

I am a man of many contradictions.

There are so many facets to my per­son­al­ity, so many lay­ers, that even I some­times lose track. My mind is like an old attic full of mem­o­ries and trea­sures that have been stored away over the years. As you wave away the cob­webs and open each box, you find some­thing even more inter­est­ing than the last, it is with each box that you open, you slowly learn about where those mem­o­ries came from, so to is it with me.

I have never been very good in express­ing myself ver­bally. I am by nature a very pri­vate per­son (and here is a huge con­tra­dic­tion), yet I can share my feel­ings, thoughts and emo­tions freely on paper (or in this case, on your screen), they flow as if there would be no stop­ping them. I write because there are tijmes when I have no other way to share what I am feel­ing, I write because the desire inside me over­whelms that part of me that wishes to remain pri­vate, I write, because I need to, because I love to. For a per­son who is so nor­mally closed off to the world, it is a release.

As I look back over my life I can­not but won­der at the fan­tas­tic oppor­tu­ni­ties that have been pre­sented to me, the adven­tures, the mis­chief I have got into, the grief I went through when I lost my part­ner, the magic of again find­ing my way back onto the path upon which I con­tinue my jour­ney through life.

I am not a cul­tured man. I  have worked hard all my life to achieve what I desired most. I can be hard, intol­er­ant of fools and at times indif­fer­ent to those who fail to help them­selves, but I am the first to hold out my hand if any­one ever needs it.

I am a roman­tic, I make no apolo­gies, I have known love as love should be known, whether I desire it again, I just don’t know. Maybe one day, maybe not.

I have no idea where life will lead me from one day to the next. I would like to say I do not care, but I do, regard­less, it is a jour­ney that I under­take with excite­ment and antic­i­pa­tion. We all need to find pur­pose in our lives, I have found many, in that I have been fortunate.

I do not write to please oth­ers, I write for myself, some­times I reach out but mostly it is the desire to write so that I might explore my feel­ings, thoughts and emo­tions, I share them, because I want to.

I do not live in the past but trea­sure it, I live for the future, I can­not hold within the pure excite­ment of each and every adven­ture or per­son who crosses my path. My past has shaped me into who I am today as will the future to come. Those that I have met have allowed me to expe­ri­ence some­thing new, to learn about myself, or to just enjoy their company.

I admit I am a con­stantly evolv­ing and com­plex man; I have no thoughts of grandeur, no illu­sions of my self worth being any more than what it is. My life is not pre ordained, the journey’s end may be, for is it not everyone’s fate, how­ever the path’s I take, the choices I make, the lessons learned, and some­times not, these are all within my grasp, they are of my doing.

What good are are my jour­neys and my adven­tures if I can­not share them with those who wish to learn of them? What good is life if I can­not learn of oth­ers, their lives, their expe­ri­ences? Life is as ful­fill­ing as we allow it, when, on the day I reach my final des­ti­na­tion it is my only wish that I am able to say;

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