The Stuff That You Love
This is not an article about the dovey love. It’s not even an article about love – period. This is an article about that one thing in your life, that one thing you can always count on all day every day.
The things
If you ask my parents or a few very close friends, they know that ever since I was two I have this doll. To be fair, now it’s not really a doll anymore. Just parts of it. Okay, part of it. Oooookay. It’s just its scalp. Forget about the creepiness for one second and focus on the fact that I have this one item that I carry with me since I was a child. I don’t want to get into the psychology of it. Suffice to say, it’s a comfort I’ve always had.
The other day, while staring through the window into the never ending rain that is the British weather, I realized there are quite a few of those items I’ve had with me for a long time and I never stopped to appreciate and enjoy the facts I have them.
Take Bear for example. Bear, together with my … ehem … doll have accompanied me everywhere for the past 17 years. I got him (yes, he is a person now) as a present a long time ago and it’s become a part of me and I can’t imagine life without it. The list could go on with a pair of jeans that fit no matter how fat or slim I got, or … even this computer. I’ve had it for 8 years and I know all its dents. I know I can’t pimp it up forever and ever, and I will have to give it up one day.
The people
Moving on from this lifeless stuff, I have come to realise how little I talk to my parents or grandparents and how I never tell them what really matters: how much they mean to me.
It’s so weird how most of us don’t really appreciate what we have. And I know it sounds like a cliche, but I remember talking to my friends or family more often about … politics than about how much I love them.
I have always taken my family for granted. That is because I am probably part of the lucky ones who has a family. With all its good, bad and ugly. But growing up, I have realised it’s wrong. It’s wrong to suppose the others know how you feel, it’s wrong to feel entitled to their love no matter what you do, it’s wrong to withhold feelings. Simply because you don’t know when those people are gone.
It sounds all cheesy and lame, but stop and think: how would you feel if tomorrow would not include that one person who taught you the basics in life like … how to knit? 🙂 Yeah, that is my grandma in the picture.
Have you started to cry already? That means it’s probably time to call them.