Don’t let what you can’t do interfere with what you can do

Life hands us all tragedies and losses, trauma and heartbreak that feels like it could truly break us. It hands us all of that and more, without asking and without gaining our permission first.

We have all learnt recently that you can’t control everything that happens. Sometimes you don’t have any say or control in what happens in your world. And at the moment we are all just living in an unknown land, with a constant question mark hanging over us.

So, what do you do? what can you do? If we can’t control this invisible enemy, what can we control? You can only control one thing. Try to control your thinking - your reactions and your mind.

Try to control how you look at life and how you look at the world. You can try to control how you view the tragedies and hardships and try to hold onto the good things, to the better and brighter things.

You can try to see a brighter tomorrow, when today is melancholy and grey, try to daydream today, in order to make all of the pain go away for a minute. Think good thoughts, no matter how awful life is at the moment.

Think about your breathing and how - right now - at this very moment, you are surviving. Think about what you do have and try to see the good in things.

While we can’t control the shit that is going on or what others are doing around us, we can control something - What you are doing! No matter what, we have to see the light. We have to hold onto hope because honestly that is all we have right now. 

We can control our outlook on life and the thoughts that we put into our heads. We can control the hope that we carry within our very being and we can try to smile. Despite the sadness, despite the tears, despite the deaths, and despite the tragedies. We can try our hardest, to just keep believing despite the darkness, we can come through this.

To be able to be free to roam and hug and eat out and pop down the pub, to travel to different areas and enjoy being with our families and loved ones again must be something you keep in your heart to enable you to carry on for this short time in our lives.

Claire Taylor-Haigh