Life Doesn’t Stop

     Sometimes you desperately want to hit pause. The world seems too big, or time is moving too fast, and you just want to stop and catch your breath, just for a moment. Just to have an extra moment to process or decide or maybe even savour something. But time never stops. Time always continues, and so must we.

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     I think we all want to feel like we’re making the most of our lives, like we’re squeezing every drop of life out of every second in the day. But the truth is, that’s impossible. You can’t go at 100%, 100mph, absolutely all of the time. Physically and mentally, we’d all collapse from exhaustion. But also, life just doesn’t allow for that sometimes. Life doesn’t care if you’re ready for something to happen or not – it just throws it at you whenever it feels like it. And sometimes you can’t relish or embrace it; sometimes you just have to hold tight and survive.

     There are so many things happening around us that are out of our control. When you’re in a good place, and you feel like you’re managing everything going on in your life, then it’s easier to roll with the punches, seize a new opportunity, or be spontaneous once in a while. But when you’re up to your neck in stress already, and yet another obstacle gets thrown in your path, it’s easy to feel like everything is going to crumble into pieces.

    So it’s ok to only just be holding on sometimes. It’s ok to not have everything running perfectly all the time. Yes, we all want to be thriving – but sometimes, surviving is enough. Not always, certainly not forever, but just for long enough to pull through the worst. You have to survive the tough times, and then you will be able to move forward and thrive during the good times.

     We have to continue. And I don’t just mean that in a motivational sense, I mean that quite literally. Time and age and life leave us no choice. They never stop, so we have to continue, in every sense. If you’re continuing upwards, if you are able to keep moving forwards, in the metaphorical, motivational sense, that’s amazing. But if you’re just continuing from day to day, that’s ok too. You’ll get there eventually, just keep holding on until you do.

     I think sometimes that’s all we need to hear. That it’s ok. It’s ok to feel a little lost, or to be struggling, or to feel like you’re not making the most of every moment. It’s ok to want to take a pause and catch your breath. It’s ok to just hold on and survive sometimes. Life carries on regardless, and it won’t always be that way. So in the mean time, you just have to continue.

Inspired by The Daily Post’s prompt, ‘Continue‘.