Thought Picnic: Just one chance to live

Proven to self, unproven to others

Every waking day, for over two years you have in gratitude and newness of life proved to yourself that there is life, hope and expectation beyond what at one time looked like a diagnosis that was terminal.

However, as strength and recovery seemed to take greater hold so has been the difficulty of proving to others that one is a prospect, one is able and one can do.

Each time, each encounter has acknowledged, praised and commended but it was always short of perfect, never the ideal or just not the right fit.

When will it end?

It is as if what one has personally left behind is constantly dogging your progress with the results sapping confidence, draining resolve and extricating bit by bit everything one has built up for decades.

You wonder how much longer can you continue to believe yourself if not one else will dare to believe or reach out to you when you are no more in that position of great strength and opportunity that once was part of the ideal expression of your personality.

Need more than talk

Yet, you are told to be encouraged in the face of privation, to be strong in the midst of disgrace, to be hopeful as everything is carted away that even it is a struggle to hold on to one’s dignity.

You then have to decide as you review the sum total of your existence, will you allow the concept of having failed to overwhelm you or that of having tried to egg you on to new heights? A man by himself can only find so much inner strength before he is exhausted.

There comes a time when all you have is really those who can give succour, respite and time for recuperation and recovery – do you have a friend to fill that space?

All you need is a chance to show that you are living and have a life worth living.