I lost a good friend a while ago. It reminded me of how sudden life is. How one moment can change everything. How one moment of darkness and heartache and utter despair can take a life. Leaving countless hearts torn, with some damaged beyond conceivable repair.
Then there are the moments that 'take our breath away.'
And the ones that make us breathe in a little deeper.
To keep it always. To capture it forever in our senses.
I've come to the conclusion that life is a series of seemingly incoherent events.
Some good,
some bad.
Some so completely unexpected it is impossible to ever truly absorb the impact.
So full of emotion it seems the body doesn't really know how to react.
Like falling in love.
Or having a baby.
Or losing someone you love.
I don't know what moments will define my life.
I like to think that none of them will specifically.
I just don't want one moment to define me.
Because I think if I let that happen,
let one moment define my life,
I am denying the validity of all the others.
I know that life is hard, and I know that it brings immeasurable amounts of both sadness and happiness.
And I know that in the end it will not have been about the moments themselves, but who I was in those moments.
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
William Ernest Henley