Focus on living life as it is in this moment

[PigPen]

Focus, maybe this analogy will help you since you're still pretty new in the game.

You used to live on an island, you lived there for 15 years. It had good parts and bad parts, but it was home, familiar and has a lot of great memories.

One day you woke up and someone kicked you off the island. Yep, the tied you up, rowed you about fifty yards offshore and dumped you out of the boat saying you could never come back. Hell, maybe that you weren't ever welcome there in the first place. Doesn't matter what they say, you're in the water now and that's what really matters.

Your only choice is to swim for a new island that people keep telling you exists. You've heard about this mythical place, but can't see it in the distance. You can't even see the outline of it. You think it's probably BS and that you're going to die.

The first half mile of the swim is hell. The waves are huge, there are sharks, jelly fish, birds crap on you, and more. You're starving, can't sleep, and if you manage to pass out for a few minutes your just dream you're safely back on your home island...then you swallow seawater and throw up.

So you keep swimming. And it's still hell. And it's still hell. Sometimes you get out into some clear water, but then there's a thunderstorm. Sometimes the storms pass, and the current washes you back to where you were three days before and you have to go through the whole ordeal again.

After what seems like an eternity, a piece of driftwood floats by and you cling on to it. You finally get some sleep, maybe catch a fish and eat it. Your life is still hell, but you're not physically dying any more.

Sometimes people in the "GAL Boat" row by and you get to sit with them, eat, and forget about your troubles for a while. They may teach you a thing or two too. You may forget about your swim for a bit until they leave and you have to get back in the water. You come here and learn not only how to swim, but also possibilities that the home island wasn't all that it seemed. Most importantly you realize that there are a lot of skills about water navigation that you thought you knew but you really didn't.

So you study, and you learn, and you make keeping your head above water a daily practice.

Little by little the waters calm down, they clear up, you're in better shape from the swimming. You've befriended a dolphin and some seagulls. Life's ok again. You've got food, a new sweet log to hang out on, and have a feeling that you may just make it.

Of course there are still storms, rogue waves, the occasional hungry shark, but you're doing well.

And then it happens. You see a glimmer of an outline. Just the slightest bit. Is it an island? Is it real? Is it a mirage or just denial? And then it disappears.

So you do what you know has worked thus far, you keep swimming, and swimming, and dealing with what the ocean throws at you. You accept the pain, the garbage in the water, the pollution, and the hurt that it all causes you.

Eventually that new island starts to come back into focus. You see it. It is real. There are happy people on it. Maybe your H is on it and he's done all of the work necessary and is sorry for being such an a-hole. Maybe he's not, but that's ok because the best part about the island isn't the other people on it - it's the you that crawls up on the shore.

The you that's lived through hell and survived. The you that is now fluent in sign language and makes world class sushi - plus infinitely morei. The you that has been expanded beyond anything thought possible prior. The you that has inevitably been changed by the experience and can never go back to being the old you that lived on the original island.

--

Does that help? That's what I keep telling myself anyway. It helped me to think of it that way because so often I felt like there was no way back and no where to go, that I had to just try not to drown and I wanted to give up and let the waves take me.

One day at a time Focus, it's a long swim and you've just begun, but the only way to get to the other side is to take it one day at a time.

PP