half_empty raze she told me this story once. there was a couple. they would visit this store owned and operated by another couple. let's say it was an antique shop. they grew into being friends, the couple who owned the place and the couple who became regular customers. they talked about all getting together one day outside of the store and having a picnic. it didn't happen, because people say all kinds of things to hear themselves say them and not so much to mark them down in their minds and make them happen. the husband who ran the store with his wife, he got cancer. right before he died, the other couple visited him in the hospital and brought a picnic lunch. so they did have their picnic after all, sort of, though i'm not sure he was lucid enough to enjoy it or if he could keep the food down. then he died. the end. she thought it was a beautiful story that said something about the enduring power of friendship. i thought it was a horrible story that said for some people it takes certain death to get them to follow through. you've got all this time to do things, to let the people you care about know you care about them, and you waste it, because you think you'll always have another chance. you only get so many chances, and when they're gone, they're all gone. being busy is a bullshit excuse. everyone's busy. something is either important enough for you to make the time to do it or it isn't. it's that simple. shut your goddamn mouth and do something now. don't wait for cancer to motivate you, for christ's sake. i guess i'm one of those glass half empty kind of people. 150625 ... unhinged (me too) people act as if they have a life full of tomorrows but the fact is the end could come at any second. karma could come to get me while i am crossing the street. step_into_fear 150625 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Is it easy to keep plans you made that are, on the surface, simple? Sometimes. But not everybody's mind works to make it that simple. I'm not sure anyone here can relate, but sometimes I avoid things because I care too much about them and get afraid I'll mess them up. Or someone will send me a message and I'll forget to answer because there are too many other messages. It doesn't mean I don't care about somebody or something. Admittedly I'm too self-centred - that's something I have to work on - but this isn't because I'm deliberately unkind or lazy. I also suck at deadlines, partly because of ADHD and partly because of this contradictory-anxiety-whatever. Your point still stands. I'm just looking at the half-empty glass from a different side of the prism. From here, I can see the rainbows, and rainbows are supposed to be happy, but there's still this persistent melancholy that comes from taking food too personally. (Also, the story made me laugh. I don't know whether I'm morbid or what, but it struck me as funny. I think it was the specificity of that thing, the picnic. To probe a bit deeper, maybe some people get too hung up on the outside of an idea - "let's go for a picnic," say - and then don't think about the more important idea of spending time together.) 150625 what's it to you? who go blather from