11th March 2022
I was asked the other day what words would I have on my gravestone. I do get asked some strange questions, but there was a reason for this one. When you are looking at your personal values ie what is most important to you,it is a way of working out what is most important in a few words. I am one for taking on the cares of the world. Being quite an empathic person has made me like this. I have a very high standard of justice and it has got me into trouble quite a few times in the past, but I can't help the way that I feel. It is sometimes so painful to be so sensitive to situations and what is happening around you. A lot of people also tend, like me, to put others first and it is not easy when you are set the task “What do you want?” to come up with an answer. I have, in the past few years, tried so hard to find a balance between the needs of others and my own but it can be so difficult.
There is also the issue that sometimes, when you have been there for someone 100% of the time, that they don't understand when you “change”, when you want to do more for yourself. I realised back in the days with my first husband that life is too short. I decided then that so much as it is in my power on my dying day I want to be able to look back and have no regrets.
Not as easy as it sounds. I still find it hard to strike the right balance. When I was given the task of writing my own epitaph, I googled it and this is what it says.
Typically the goal of the epitaph is to leave some words of wisdom, share the most important values of the deceased, or summarise the person's life.
How many people think of, or get the chance to, write their own epitaph?. Would we want to, at the chance of sounding arrogant ? . It is usually left to someone else, would they get it right about you do you think?
I will have to have a long hard think about what I would write before I let the person who asked me know. :-)
Finding balance is never an easy task, is it? Whether it's work/leisure balance, money balance, relationship balance, or food intake balance, it can be so difficult to keep those scales on a flat line, like those old fashioned scales with weights on one side and a container on the other. 🙂 Whatever the balance needs to be, it is better for our wellbeing that one side does not outweigh the other. Being out of balance can cause so many problems. Ask me, who has Meniere's disease!🙂But seriously life and health really needs to have some kind of balance.
With my weight loss journey, at the moment I am still trying so hard to find that right balance. I am still very anaemic, so I have to be able to eat a healthy diet that gives me plenty of iron, while still being able to treat myself when I want to eat something “less” healthy. All this while on a restricted calorie intake, because I can't exercise in the traditional way.
It is hard, but I am getting there. I'm teaching myself at the moment to try to maintain my weight rather than losing it. Maintaining weight is something I have never been able to do for any good length of time. In the last forty-five years of weight fluctuation I have found weight loss hard but keeping it off even harder. Some people say that you can't keep weight off but I will try to master it, to break the cycle and find my balance 🙂
One thing I know will NOT be in my epitaph is weight loss. There is far, far, more to life than just that! I will not be defined by one thing alone when there is so much more to me and who I am.
Until next time,
Love, Jackie
xx
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