Merry Christmas!

My favourite Christmas song isn't really a Christmas song but I think I can get away with including it here.  The song is called 'What If' and was recorded as part of the soundtrack to 'Christmas Carol: The Movie' the 2001 live action/animation adaptation of the Dickensian classic, starring Kate Winslet who performs the track.  The track resonates with me on many levels, a story that many can relate to, of a love for someone that goes awry leading to the two of you parting ways, and in years to come you look back on that time and wonder what might have been, what if...

I like to think that everything in life happens for a reason, sometimes that reason is known to us, others it is not.  Sometimes we eventually find out why and sometimes we never do.  I like to think that everything worked out the way it was meant to work out.  I know that plays with the ideas of fate and destiny and opens up a huge debate about free will but let's leave that for now, it's too heavy to get into.  The point I was making is that when I look back on the "one that got away" or, ones, as there are a few guys I think could fit that moniker, I like to think it didn't work out because it wasn't meant to work out.  You can write that off as sentimentality and wishful thinking, you can even put it down to a desire to shirk responsibility but in my defence I don't think any of those relationships could have been saved by anything they or I could have done.

Nevertheless there's always the thought of "What If" and the curiosity of what life might have been like if it had worked out.  I don't know the answer to that question and like the lyrics to the song say, "I guess we'll never know" - still the curiosity remains.  There are many things in life we can never know, it doesn't stop us dreaming about them or wondering.

On the flip side there are many things that have happened in my life since, which I don't think would have happened had things worked out.  I guess if you weren't the sort to accept the sentimentality of reminiscing about the past and what might of been, it would be better to look at your present and your future and make the conscious decision that you want to do something or make something happen now in your life you can categorically say would never have happened had things worked out, because you are making that decision exactly because they didn't, and make it big enough and meaningful enough to say to yourself it was justified for things to have never worked out, for this to have happened instead.

What you choose to do is up to you, but if you think about those who go on to have lives of happiness in absence of the path they could have taken, those who have no regrets are often those who think that the path they took worked out better in the end - so why not try and make this path as best you can?

There's a quote I love, the precise wording I can't recall but it goes along these lines:

The past is written and cannot be changed, the future is tomorrow and still to come, today is a gift, that's why it's called the present.

Today is a day associated with giving and receiving gifts, so why not give yourself a gift by making a change in your life that will make it better, no matter how big or how small, not just today but every day hereafter, try to do something that makes your life better in some small way and maybe in the end the sum total of all those gifts will amount to something that makes everything in your past feel like it was worth it.

That's a bit melancholy I know but it wouldn't be Christmas if there wasn't some reflection and some contemplation of life.  Every year at this time I like to celebrate togetherness and be thankful for what I do have, however great or small that may seem.  The religious nature of Christmas I have to say has faded for me over the years.  I've redefined the holiday choosing what it means to me and celebrating that instead.  To that end, Merry Christmas!