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Home / Whanganui Chronicle

A bittersweet mix of life

By Shirley-Joy Barrow
Wanganui Midweek·
20 Mar, 2019 01:15 AM3 mins to read

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"What is life but a bittersweet mix of sadness, wonderment, hope and joy." from When calls the Heart.

What to do when alone and relaxing? Watch movies and missed series, read, garden and write.
So often I get my inspiration from something I have watched or read, or something from Facebook
that someone else finds inspiration in. I know some say we are becoming a strange people who live "nose down" in our phones, wide-eyed with fingers glued to our Xboxes and screens. I find it interesting that through all this multi-media, inspiration can still come. We are often touched by something someone else says or does, especially if we are open to wisdom from others. We can still be touched by sad movies, crazy stunts and laugh out loudly at antics we see.

Life is a mixture of so many things, and often a bittersweet mix. My Angels remind me it is through this "bittersweet mix", this pleasant and painful life full of experiences and memories that we are connected to each other. Connected in the families and communities we live in and even the planet we live on, even though we have little proof, in the unknown galaxy. It is this "bittersweet mix" that connects us to our mortality.

Through our lives, we have adventures. When we are young, we pretend we can do all manner of things (sometimes we try and find it is not so easy to fly); sometimes the fear keeps us grounded and sometimes hiding away. Getting older we get more careful maybe take fewer risks and know we cannot fly unless in a flying machine and even that it is not always that safe — because things happen.

How we deal with what happens is what makes us stronger. How we live through the pleasant and the painful brings depth to our lives and through each of us to the lives of others when we share our stories. As Bruno Mars (or should I say Peter Gene Hernandez), the American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and dancer once said, "There's a bittersweet kind of thing, but I feel like everything had to work out the way it is. Everything that had to happen, happened".
Let your experiences make you strong. Arohanui.

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Shirley-Joy — Author of Mission in the City — Hopes and Dreams. Available as a guest speaker. To book phone 021 247 1747.

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