Carpe Diem

"...I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck all the marrow of life, To put to rout all that was not life, and not - when I had come to die - discover that I had not lived"
[Henry David Thoreau]

I walk past this church and graveyard on a daily basis. I was being a good and conscientious novice, Experimenting with taking pictures using no flash, only altering the camera settings. The Thoreau quote came to me while I was doing it.

Don't know about you, but i'm of the belief that we get one life. So better live it well.

I'm sometimes guilty of bending that little philosophy to my own ends ...
e.g. of COURSE i need that new handbag, it will make me feel good.
e.g. I'll just book the sodding holiday, we're a long time dead!!!
e.g. One more glass of wine won't hurt, I deserve it, i've had a hard day ..

But when i'm not being such a selfish cow, I think more about the phrase "living well", and I don't think it necessarily equates to "consuming stuff" or "experiencing stuff" (though, embarrassingly enough, that's what occurs to me first when I think of living well).

When I dial down the selfishness, and try to be a bit more humanitarian (a noble thing to aim for, but really, I fail at it all the time, I get distracted by shiny consumerism on a daily basis), when I try to be a bit more humanitarian, then I think the definition of living well, can only really be applied to people who made a difference. People who stood up for something and made a difference.

Whether that's your Aunt Lesley who ran the London Marathon dressed as a banana to raise money for cancer research, or your friend who did a gap year working in orphanages, or whether it's that student chappie who stood in front of the tanks at Tiannenmen Square. (Remember that?)

That's living well.

I wish I was better at it.


Oooh - Look, something sparkly .......