Bittersweet Contentment

I've generally considered myself a rather risk adverse/neutral person. I am a banker after all! But seriously, I don't walk alone with headphones on because I want to be aware of my surroundings, I hate dashing across a busy street (despite years of living in Asia!), I won't stand by the window of a tall building for fear I might somehow fall out!


But I've suddenly realised that the risky stuff that I avoid, is really not that important at all. Let's face it - to risk yourself, your heart, your dignity. Those are the mother of all risks. But as the universe would have it - nothing ventured, nothing gained. I'm now older, and luckily, wiser. So you know what, who cares if someone takes my money and who cares if I live in a cardboard box. I care more that I matter to someone. That I am somebody to someone. Someone that, even if the world caved in, made everything alright.

I can tell what you're thinking already. The usual cynical me would've beat you to it  you'd care if you were hungry, you'd care if you were cold then you'd be singing a different tune. Perhaps Patti Smith and Don Henley's 'Baby, sometimes, love just ain't enough?'

Life was never meant to be perfect. Nobody said it would be. We all knew that fairytales were figments of some writer's imagination and nobody said we'd get everything we dreamed of. But surely it's not silly to hope for more, for the extraordinary.

An author once wrote: people have low expectations of happiness. Call me crazy but life can get scary and let's face it, it's definitely too short. If you ask me to pick between the stock standard dream of a married life with a nice guy, a house, two kids and a dog or to have just one wonderful day with the man who knocks the wind out of me when he smiles at me, makes me tear up constantly from feeling emotions I've only ever read about, the man who makes every bad thing (yes, every single one) tolerable, a man who man rocks my world. You can be sure which one I'd pick. Over and over - no matter how insane you think I am.

I read the words of Mark Twain the other day. He wrote about what he imagined Eve (of Adam and Eve) saying: "When I look back, the Garden is a dream to me. It was beautiful, surpassingly beautiful, enchantingly beautiful; and now it's lost and I shall not see it anymore. The Garden is lost but I have found him, and I am content".

And me, I have everything I never knew I wanted. At the risk of growing into that weird old lady with the cats, I wouldn't change a thing. I did find him, and I too, am content.

Ducky