The future is now.

“Belief in our mortality, the sense that we are eventually going to crack up and be extinguished like the flame of a candle, I say, is a gloriously fine thing. It makes us sober; it makes us a little sad; and many of us it makes poetic.” unknown

This blog is about listening to the voices in your brain that tell you things must change. And this past week the message was shouted to us loud and clear. The scales were leaning towards, ‘if my husband is sick I cannot manage the horses all by myself’. I didn’t want to admit that I can no longer do what I used too but it’s true and it became my reality over the past eight days.

Don and Sorsha 2011

Becoming sick and unable to leave bed was Don’s worst nightmare, as was the thought of leaving me to do everything around the property. But this is what happened. For me the sense of overwhelm was incredibly controlling and scary. Life’s responsibilities and endeavours have this sneaky way of seeping into your life and using your energy, then when something happens to disrupt the day to day routine, there’s no back up plan and the feeling is overwhelming. If any of you are like us, you are already planning for the future but what happens when the future is all of a sudden the present?

With Don 70% recovered, this is where we sit – the future is now!

As we contemplate the past week we are convinced of our mortality. Now we’re asking what do we truly want for the last decades of our life?

The awareness of death is inherent within all of us. When confronted with this reality, we tend find ways to sort our relationships and our goals. Since we’re all affected by mortality, can we look inside our minds to create meaning in our lives. The trouble is in the last 8 days, the very things (the horses) which assisted to soothe and give my life meaning became the complication when it came to Don being sick. The horses have always had the power to submerge my fears and take me to a better place so when the opposite happens, it’s quite the double edge sword.

On the other hand, again talking about myself, it’s the horses who have led me down another life path. They are the inspiration behind my books. Maybe by admitting that it’s time for change is a good thing. Certainly I’ve known for some time that I don’t have enough time in the day to write novels and breed horses. My lack of blogs proves this over the past week. But my writing, and relating to horse people in this new and different manner has given my life a new sense of value, purpose, and meaning.

For most of us, it’s almost second-nature to carry on a dialogue in our heads against the realization of our mortality. Heaven knows – a birthday is coming up again soon! Yet each of us has the power to embrace something new, change direction and continue to build our lives even as we get older and wiser – yes, we do get wiser! We can use our hard earned knowledge of life as inspiration to treat each other well and to make the most out of the precious time we have.