Racing to the finish line

The ‘nice boys’ are few and far between. But then again, they all screw you over in the end. Basically, it’s survival of the fittest; who best prepares for failure and who stays standing to find a way forward.

We go through life and through relationships until we get to the perfect one. And each one before this is like a test run - a place and time where we learn what to do and how to do them. Each practice, whether you get one or twelve, builds up our strength. When our hearts are broken they only heal stronger.

The nice guys think they come last. It’s the nice guys who end up settling for anything because they are only too impatient to wait their turn. So in the end it’s all mixed up. Nobody ends up with who they’re supposed to. The pressure turns on everybody in time.

To some it’s just games but to others it’s a vicious reality and pointless cycle which we must go through to reach our time and our place.

One day we'll see that the nice ones make it to the finish line, even after lagging, while the rest take a fall just before victory.

But in the end it all comes down to being ‘your’ time, not just racing to the finish line.

Live every day like you're at your peak, but not like it's your last. And, stop competing with me.

As Lawrence Ferlinghetti clearly demonstrated in ‘Two Scavengers in a Truck, Two Beautiful people in a Mercedes’, life is nothing but a competition. If I’ve scrimped and scraped for a 15 year old Fiesta, she’s just had a brand new Mini delivered on her driveway.

If I have £7.50, she has a tenner. And I’m getting tired of it.

As the competition steps up, life just gets tiresome. Effort. At what point are we at our peak? When won’t life get any better?  And why does nobody tell us when we’re at this time, so we can make the most of it and stop complaining for ten minutes?

For a moment, like the scavengers and the beautiful people, anybody can be held together; in space, time or even unintentionally. In time, we’re all as one, yet people’s attributes tear us apart as a community. The rich stick with the rich, and poor with the poor. Friendlies with the friendlies and bitches carry bitches; aside from those tag-alongs, too scared to get on the wrong side of them. We all have a character, a place, a group; it's just finding the right one for us.

Raymond Hithcock said, ‘a man isn’t poor if he can still laugh’. I’ll always be laughing – rich, poor, or wholly in debt.  

Are we really capable of deciding who to trust?

What is the meaning of trust? Where comes the point that we say ‘yes I trust him’ or ‘yes I trust her’? How do we know when we’re over the speed bump, over the boundary between trusting somebody and just thinking we trust them?

I guess we’ll never know. It could take a year, or could just take an hour.

Do we ever know when we trust somebody though? Can we ever fully trust one person? Or, is it that we only ever know if we don’t trust somebody because we’ve learnt not to trust them through experience?

To trust somebody is to take a new road, one we may not feel completely safe on. But for that person in which we trust, it’s something whereby they feel valued and confided in. For some of us, trust is something which we keep to ourselves because the hassle isn’t worth the potential damage; but for the rest of us we take pride in sharing things with our friends, family and sometimes even the odd stranger whom with we participate in small talk.

With a new life, experiences in which I do not wish to recall and having met thousands of new people, I’ve learnt more about trust than you can imagine. When to trust, when not to trust, and more importantly, when to hold back on making my decision about trust.

But most importantly, I’ve learnt:

When unsure, TRUST NO-ONE!  

If you're going to HOLD back, don't ever LOOK back

It’s not hard to miss an opportunity; in fact it’s easier to miss one than to accept one and follow it through. We’re often mislead by our minds when new doors open because of the fear that we associate with ‘new’. It’s the ‘fear of the unknown’.

Sometimes though, we just have to go for it; stop thinking so much and just throw ourselves in at the deep end. After all, what’s the point in holding back, missing the chance and then regretting it? Sure, it could all go wrong and we could regret even going there, but at least nobody can ever say you didn’t try.

One opportunity often leads on to another, and more often than not, yet another. So I guess we should ask ourselves, is it worth missing out for the sake of being too scared at not being able to see the outcome?

Change isn’t always for the good, nor always for the bad. It’s simply what it says on the packet: a change from the norm. But I think some kind of change is always good; you never hear anybody speak of their perfect life do you?

And that is exactly where the heart of it all is: nobody is ever fully satisfied with what they have or the life they live.

WHO is she?!

[Don't worry Hannah, i'll rock on down to Blackpool and sort her out!]

We all have that one person whom we can’t see eye to eye with – be it due to an argument, a disagreement, or just a general dislike. Some of us could probably provide a number of names, or even full-blown lists, of this relationship kind.

Often, having an enemy is just a walk in the park; something in the back of the mind – if in mind at all. But for some of us it’s something we’re constantly reminded of. Something that we seem to run from then find ourselves back where we started. You’d think after a considerable amount of time the slate would have been eroded clean and the two people have so much going on in life that it’d be a case of ‘each to their own’. But in some cases, at least those I’ve been involved with, there’s always one who’s ‘too good’; sat on a pedestal and too stubborn to give in. Often, it’s not even a case of giving in, it’s all about forgetting, not even forgiving, and making life easier for those stuck between the rut as if squashed between two book-ends. But I've learnt to diagnose it as the person on the other side needing to find more to life! 

It always gets me how some people can be SO selfish and one minded. How can people only think about ‘number one’. I guess it advertises what type of person they are and stands a spectacle of jealousy that one person has over another.

On another note, it’s something we can laugh about. Some people need to find something to occupy them; move on and get a grip of life! At least I know I’ve always got people behind me, more than that of a party.

But we’ve got to remember; when taking a step back from the enemy, don’t step too far! Make it just enough so they don’t realise you’re there.

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.