Becoming you.

As much as you and I would like to believe, we are not individuals. We don’t stand on our own two feet, but rather, we are interconnected to a greater web of dependance than we realise. Love nurtures us in to who we are, and friendships bind us in to a greater destiny, to reach the full potential of who we can be. Friendships, love and creativity, those are the single most important aspects of individuality.

Love is a strange one. I keep thinking I know what it is, or that I’ve come to realise the full potential of what it can be. But then events follow that lead me to reevaluate the very premise of what I initially believed. Today I stand before you as a man, who loves a woman. She is the single most import aspect of my being. And there isn’t any lengths that I would not go to for her. I don’t know what tomorrow holds, but if the past six years have taught me anything, it’s that love can fluctuate like a beating heart. And sometimes it can stop beating altogether. It can seem like it’s still. Dead. But love is immortal, so it can revive itself from a perceived death. It can flourish again like a tree that has failed to bear flowers or fruit for decades. It’s inexplicable. But it is, what it is. I love her more than I could put into words. As cliched as it sounds, as the lyrics of my favourite song say, “I really like what you’ve done to me, I can’t really explain it”. In a nutshell though she… Is the single most important aspect of who I am as an individual. She is the love of my life and one day she will be the mother of my children.

In life there are few friends who you can call true friends. I am privileged to far too many to list how they construct the fibres of my being. Friends are however as vital to individual strength as water is to all life. They give us borrowed strength and push us to our limits, sometimes even far beyond. They help us realise who and what we want. We support each other, cry on one another’s shoulders and help piece the fragmented pieces of our lives together, when everything we know falls apart. If nothing else friendships prevail over most things. Sometimes friendships can be more stable than love. But it’s because they are built with an entirely different kind of love that they display a stronger density. Love can be weakened by passion. The kind of love that underpins friendship is built upon trust and caring. That it what makes it so resilient to beatings.

Creativity is something I value immensely. Tumblr has been an amazing platform for the form my creativity likes to take most of all. The form of words. Words. Simple things, but ultimately they help me grasp a greater understanding of myself. Sometimes it’s difficult to speak to yourself. To tell yourself things you know are hard to hear. But when I write them down and read them back it becomes all the more easier to swallow. Tumblr has shown me that I can do things with words I didn’t know I could. That few can do, as I do, the way I do. By that I don’t mean that I can write better than anyone else, but rather what I write and how I write takes my own voice. It acts like a fingerprint. The way I articulate myself through words is unique to me. It gives oneself an aspect of individuality. To end, I must take this opportunity to thank everyone who has read these thoughts. You’ve influenced the person I am, and who I am becoming.

So you see being an individual is not about standing on your own feet. It’s about being a part of something greater. Something you can’t quite begin to explain. It’s an entire ecosystem of relationships fostered through love and friendships. Materialised by creativity that give us a sense of who we are. Take not for granted how these pieces build you up to stand tall. To set you out on a path that will lead to greatness of some degree.