Only touched the surface

I want to quickly tell you of an interesting moment I experienced earlier today. I was in a room that had reddish coloured curtains that were drawn shut, allowing the sunlight to shine through, tinting the colour of the room. As I sat in the room I saw some obvious blue veins on my leg which I’d never noticed before, I then shifted my focus and noticed that bright blue veins were showing up all over my body due to the light. Although I’d always known that there were veins all over my body it was the strangest thing actually seeing them, I felt rather like a picture out of my high school biology textbook.

It got me thinking, in a slightly more metaphorical sense, how many other aspects to myself I haven’t yet seen. I wondered how much there really is to me just under the surface that hasn’t yet been able to come to light, but would given a change of circumstance. These veins keep me alive, they never stop working and I’m covered in them, they’re a truly fundamental part of who I am yet I'd never given them a second thought before. It all sounds very silly, but for me it was fairly symbolic and I learnt a lesson; there are so many aspects to ourselves which we haven’t yet discovered or even acknowledged to be there, both physically and I suppose too within our personality. They showed me that there are endless bounds of self-discovery that I have to do and really I’ve only just touched the surface on getting to know who I am.

love, bean xx

Are we really the intelligent ones?

When I look around nowadays, irrelevant of where I may be, I see people who are trying to give themselves a purpose. When young we are taught it's a vital thing to do, from being a toddler we're asked ‘what do you want to do when you're older?'. I walked around a city this afternoon for 3 hours just observing; mobiles, suits, rushing around, everything and everyone looked so serious. But if everything were to be stripped back, hypothetically you weren't able to recall anything prior to this moment, what would you be left with? Primarily you are simply left with your body anything else like the makeup, clothes, relationships and jobs are just what you've decided to add to your life. These other additional factors we can survive without, but what about an integral organ such as your lungs? You can survive without your career but lungs are a vital part to your survival. Yet people smoke in hope of maintaining and balancing their stress levels to excel in their career. Effectively, people are willing to literally die for their jobs. Of course, this is only one scenario I could go on forever listing the different harmful things that people do to their bodies in order to keep these impermeable parts of their lives thriving. Fascinating; this is human behaviour.

Our one true responsibility I believe in life is to look after our bodies simply in order to keep on living, I wonder how many people out there sacrifice things to do this job justice? It’s probably a good thing that our heart doesn’t rely on us to consciously keep the blood pumping around our body. Evidence from observing other human decisions would suggest that we’d probably all be dead in days due to our bizarre priority lists. Soon to be mothers tend to be very cautious to not smoke or drink and to take in extra nutrients all in order to care for their growing foetus. Then the baby is born and everything normally goes back to how it was before for the new mother. And as we grow up and have to look after ourselves this care for our ever-growing bodies gets thrown out the window too.

If you were in a house on fire your instinct would probably be to run as far away as fast as possible from the life threatening circumstance. It’s our animal instinct. Actions such as smoking is actively and consciously walking into that burning building. It’s slower but it will inevitably harm your body and ultimately it’s a death sentence. I often think animals are the more intelligent creatures because they listen to their bodies, they're happy to feel what they’re feeling and they do things in their best interest to thrive and stay alive. Animals only eat the food that they were designed to eat. Although humans can digest meat if you look at our teeth, as an example, they aren’t similar to those of a true carnivore, they are blunt and good for nibbling on foods such as vegetables. We can survive on a 100% plant based diet but we cannot survive on a diet composed purely of just meat. Interesting… I hope that you aren’t one of these people I have spoken about in this post, I hope you're somebody who takes care to nourish your body everyday and respect it for all that it does for you.

love, bean xx

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Now is the only time

Tiredness, stress, anger, death; recently I have felt so overwhelmed by these negative things that seem to try and take over my life, perhaps to an extent I've also been ignorant and not accepted the power they can have on your life if you allow them. As of late in the news there have been far too many articles for my comfort about young people tragically dying, due to both self-inflicted and natural causes. No cause of death makes it, for me, any less heart-breaking when you can see the masses of potential that these youngsters had. I think it also hits home pretty hard as I, like many others, am at a cross road in my life where I’m choosing the direction that I want to take, a decision that determines so much, not only for me but potentially for others too. In retrospect I see how self-absorbed I’ve been in my tedious everyday actions, forgetting to actually start living and appreciating each moment I'm gifted with.

I was in a fair amount of shock last night when I hear the news that a 13 year old girl called Talia had died, whose outlook on life had and will continue to teach me so much about what constitutes to real living. She was fighting cancer for 6 years yet she had hundreds of thousands of people subscribed to her on YouTube, and reached out to even more, inspiring so many to be a little happier and worry a little less. She inspired me personally in so many ways and the thing that hurt me the most about hearing of her death is that there was so much that I wanted to continue to learn from her. She accepted her situation, she wasn’t afraid to show how she was feeling and she did what made her truly happy. Need I say much more about this wonderful person? Ellen Degeneres was right when she described her as having an 'old soul'. I believe that she took her life firmly in both hands and ran with it, letting nothing slow her down. At 13 she had achieved more than most do in a lifetime because she was motivated and wasn’t going to let her personal demon, cancer, stand in her way, which would have been a much better excuse then most to not want to fight and achieve as much as they can. 

When I watched her videos it often made me feel so silly about myself because I'd been worrying and letting myself get upset about the most tedious of things yet she was teaching others incredible lessons. For instance, accepting your situation and the truth but not letting it dominate your life and instead highlighting the things that you do like, for her it was through the means of showing her bald head yet wearing makeup and showing off her favourite features of her face. This in itself makes me want to fight, I want to fight against my natural instinct of letting other people and the little voice in my head influence how much I achieve. I have a fair amount of dreams and I feel, even just in honour to Talia, that I should try my hardest to make sure that they come true. Recognise what it is that you want to achieve then run with it, don’t ever look back just keep on going. The second you stop and try to apply conventional logic then may lose the true wild spirit that it takes to achieve the most extravagant of aspirations.

Love, bean xx

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD4otT45t00