They say ignorance is bliss and, quite often, I’m inclined to agree.
Last Friday, we had the misfortune of attending the funeral of the baby boy of a very close friend of ours. He lived a matter of hours and the beautiful, emotional service proved – if there were ever any doubt – that there is little in life more powerfully heart-wrenching than the sight of a coffin that can be carried by one person.
What the day did bring home to me, however, is just how right my theories about children have always been.
Our friends have a beautiful young daughter who will now no longer be a big sister and she was wisely, kept away from the raw grief of the service itself, but did come to join us for the gathering afterwards.
Watching her and her cousin tearing around, enjoying the attention and huge selection of people from whom to choose their doting affection, brought so much of life into focus.
I’ve always said that as adults we can all learn valuable lessons from young children. Until a child is into their school years, the most important thing in the world to them is whatever they happen to be doing at any given time.
As we grow older all manner of outside pressures, fears, hopes and dreams invade our personal space and lead us away from moment-to-moment living into a world of “what next”.
In the theories of zen, being in the moment is known as mindfulness; a state of being where one totally invests oneself into the moment/task at hand. Watching the children running around on Friday showed just how wonderful this can be.
As the song goes, life goes on. It’s hard, yes, and the pain will never truly pass. But the last thing anyone wants when they pass on is for those they leave behind to call a halt to their lives.
We owe it to everyone that has gone before us – be it in the recent or distant past – to live a life that’s full, happy and appreciated for every second. There’s always a time for sadness and we never want to be ignorant of the pain and grief that death causes, but we must always strive to stay focused on the important part of life: the living.
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I’ve been mulling over a lot of the things I want to do in 2012 since I posted my list of goals. The question is, was the list enough?
That list represents the essence of everything I want to do over the next 12 months, the things I want to focus my life on and what I think will bring me the most happiness and fulfilment throughout the year. But is striving for “more” of something too generic an aim? Should I have more specific, more focussed goals?
Schools of thought on goals, aims, targets or whatever you choose to call them vary widely all around the world and across the internet. Some people live entirely without goals, others suggest a single goal at a time. Still others suggest a whole raft of long-sighted goals that you take baby steps towards achieving every single day. So what’s the right way to do it?
I suspect, like just about every other productivity hack, life-style design tutorial or future-planning tip, trick or tool, the answer is whatever works for you. Will I be more successful this year if I lay out all of my aims and objectives in clear, concise points, posted somewhere obvious to keep an eye on, or will I be better off ignoring everything a taking things one day at a time, one piece at a time?
Knowing myself, I suspect I’m somewhere in the middle – I don’t like planning a long way in the future; my life has always been far too uncertain for that. But I also know that without some sort of target, I tend to rest on my laurels a bit too much and wait for opportunities to present themselves. If I’m truly going to be able to achieve the long-term, big-picture goals I laid out at the turn of the year, I feel that I need to set myself concise, short-term targets for the steps I need to have taken to make things work.
The plan, then, going forward into the year, is to find and set myself manageable goals and to make them public via this blog. We all know a little bit of public pressure (and support) can do wonders to focus the mind and achieve a motivation that tends to be lacking when we’re focussed purely on a goal within our head.
Look out, then, for my first few major short-term goals, which will hopefully arrive on here as soon as I’ve settled on them in my head. It’s then up to you to keep me on track – bug me on Twitter, hit me up on Google+ or harangue me over Facebook; anything you feel you need to do to keep me on target to achieve what I want to get through.
Call it crowdsourcing for life. Let’s see how it works.
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Just before the end of the year, I headed up to Stafford to see one of my oldest friends in Panto. I have a real soft-spot for Panto; it’s silly, it’s fun and it’s the kind of show that can get a whole family cheering, booing and singing along with the broadest grins on their faces. And, as an ex-theatre man, anything that puts bums on seats is great by me.
For my overseas readers, Panto (or Pantomime, to give it its full title), is a peculiarly English tradition of theatre where the lead boy is usually played by a girl, the main comic character is a man in drag and the plot is usually taken from a fairy story, historical events or classic children’s tale. And yes, it’s for kids.
Look around the theatres of the UK over the Christmas period and you will see numerous and varied versions of Aladdin, Jack and the Beanstalk, Dick Whittington (another peculiarly British story, about a former Lord Mayor of London and his cat), Snow White and many others.
Although it sounds like some kind of drug-fuel hallucination, the real fun and value of a panto can only be genuinely enjoyed by going to see one. I heartily recommend it to anyone visiting the UK over a Christmas period – they are a treat not to be missed.
No, they’re not the best-produced or slickest pieces of theatre you’ll see all year. They’re not the height of comedy nor will the performances trouble any award judges, but they bring one simple thing into the life of adults that can often be lacking: children’s laughter.
The thing I love more than anything else in Panto is the laughter, the shouts, the screams and the boos of the children who love to hate the baddie, love to love the leading ‘man’ and love to be swept away into another world of fun, fantasy and frolicking like no other.
Sitting in the Gatehouse Theatre in Stafford last week, I watched a fun, entertaining show that I wouldn’t have seen were it not for Dan. But what really made it for me was the child in the row in front getting utterly absorbed in the whole thing. Rarely do you see a child so passionately involved in anything in the modern world and be allowed to shout, chatter and take part in the way kids are in these shows.
Christmas is a time for magic and miracles all over the world. And the greatest of these is the laughter of a child. Truly, nothing can beat it.
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For those of you who just love a list, here’s what you need to know:
1. Write more.
2. Shoot more
3. Relax more.
4. Feel worthy
For those of you who want just a little more detail, read on.
WRITE MORE
I love to write. Writing is what kept me going pre-transplant and it’s what helped (and still helps) me make sense of the world around me. Sitting in front of a big white screen and pouring out my thoughts gives me comfort and catharsis.
There are two things I want to achieve with my writing this year: I want to write a screenplay or a stage play that gets produced – by me or someone else – and I want to increase the readership of this blog.
I’ve spent many years wandering the wilderness with this blog since it started way back in the dark days of 2006, but I think this fresh new look at the life that’s been gifted to me allows me, I hope, to stick to what I’m good at: the joys and surprises of my life.
2012 itself will see me turn 30, get married and pass the 5-year post-transplant mark – a point only 50% of people who receive a double-lung transplant reach. After that, there’s currently no solid statistics for survival rate, so your guess is as good as mine. But I plan to keep going and going and to keep charting my progress right here, as I always have.
SHOOT MORE
I love taking pictures and I love making films. In 2012 I hope to to more of both.
I want to stop myself procrastinating over my ideas and just start shooting them. I’m greatly inspired by Danny Lacey, who’s 16mm short, Love Like Hers, I co-produced in the summer of 2010 and who has since gone on to great things; I believe his secret lies in taking action: deciding he wants to do something, gathering the tools and people and shooting it.
Equally, Philip Bloom, who collaborated on Danny’s latest short film, often shoots all kinds of esoteric subjects in the name of camera tests etc. More than that, though, he doesn’t stop to wonder if they’re good or bad, fascinating or not; he just shoots them, cuts them and gets them out there.
That’s the kind of fearlessness I want in my own filmmaking in the next 12 months.
RELAX MORE
I can be quite a highly-strung person. I can get too invested in things, too caught up emotionally and I can let my temper get the better of me.
This year, I dabbled with the teachings of Buddhism and Zen, largely through the extraordinary Leo Babuta and his Zen Habits blog. As I read more and learned more, I found more peace, more calm and more control.
In the last couple of months as the Christmas period approached and the workload started to pile up in the lead-up to the break, I started to let this new outlook on life slip and get away from me.
I want 2012 to be the year I learned to quell my turmoil; the year I learned how to be truly happy; the year I learned how not to judge others, but live in my own peace; and the year I learned who the best me really is.
FEEL WORTHY
For anyone who’s had a transplant, they’ll tell you there’s always a sense of doing right by your donor. I don’t mean survivor’s guilt, but rather the idea that my donor is watching and a desire to know that they are smiling down on me and everything I do; that when I finally meet my maker and my re-maker in whatever is to come, they can slap me on the back and tell me they are proud.
That’s why 2012, for me, is about connecting with and helping people to achieve the things they most want to get out of their lives. I’m working on both a free eBook and a new website to help encourage people to do just that – seizing life by the proverbials and living it the way they truly want to.
Of course, I’ve got other goals, smaller goals, things I would love to do, but these five things encapsulate everything that drives me and everything I want to achieve.
If I can look back on 2012 in late-December and see that I’ve taken steps towards achieving all of these, I’ll be proud. And pride in oneself and what you accomplish is far from a deadly sin, but rather the warmest of rewards for never wasting a moment.
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This weekend, I celebrate four years of new life and give thanks to the person that has given me this chance.
Thanks to my transplant occurring after midnight, it means I can enjoy two totally separate days:
The first day is dedicated solely to my donor, to give thanks, pray for their family and think of what they have done for me and everyone in my life by being so selfless at the worst of times.
The next day can then be exclusively a day of celebration, a day when I can allow myself to rejoice in the gift I’ve been given and the things it’s allowed me to do.
This time of year is always a reflective one for me. Four years ago today, I had no idea whether or not I’d make it past Christmas and, if I did, when the end might come. I’d reached rock bottom, my ultimate nadir, and I was just about ready to give up.
The call, when it came, didn’t feel any different to the four previous calls I’d experienced until the moment the transplant coordinator came into my room and told me, finally, that it would be going ahead.
Although I’ve tried, almost every year, to express the gratitude I feel towards my donor and their family, no words will ever be strong enough.
At times, when I’m at my lowest, I feel unworthy of the gift I’ve been given. I feel pressure to be the best I can be, to do things that I would never have been able to, to be remarkable in every way and to do amazing things. To not achieve the impossible sometimes feels like a betrayal of my gift.
Then I think of the world I live in, the people I love and who love me in return, and I realise that each and every day I’m here, sharing my life with the people around me, is enough to be proud of and aspire to.
Everything else is a bonus.
