In that moment, life happens

Good day all. It’s been a while I know, disappointments at my silence, promises about weekly posts broken and all that must have been rife but life happens. I've been busy. Heck I guess most of us have been busy seeing as it is exam season in most parts of the world. With exam season on my end comes very many birthdays to manage in the same time frame. By some unimaginable stroke of luck, most of my friends and family were born during and after the great month of August. So this has meant attending awesome events and juggling school schedules at the same time.

Usually, being the pile of nerves that I am most of the time, this situation would have caused me great distress in terms of time management, but not this time. Why? Well I don’t know, but whatever the cause, I condone it completely. Instead of worrying about time I stepped back and enjoyed the moment. Okay, this is probably the part where some of you might wonder about how one enjoys exam moments. Well I have these really awesome practical subjects that really push me creatively and technically. I won’t lie, it’s tough having to give up collections of nights of sleep to these subjects but there is something about becoming completely consumed in doing something you love that is worth the price. The itchy eyes, hair breakage, coffee addiction and general exhaustion are nothing to brag about, but I must admit, those things make me feel just slightly more alive.

What about those birthdays? I love birthdays. They make me smile inside my heart. For my birthday I went home with my sister for the usual family braai (that’s barbecue for those who don’t know). I helped my dad with the flame and we had a lovely chat at the fireplace while he put the meat on the fire. I wish I could say it was a beautiful sunny day in the south of Johannesburg but keeping to the lovely September rainy season, it was overcast and the wind was on its own mission that day. Running in and out the house as the first drops started to fall was hilarious. Even more hilarious was keeping an umbrella over the meat that was still struggling to get grilled on the fire.

In all that craziness of smoke and rain drops and dying fires something beautiful happened. The sun broke through the clouds and shone through the leaves of one of the trees in our garden, the swirling smoke from the fire then danced in that beam of light as if it were a scene from a movie. The scene was so breathe taking I just had to take a picture of it. With the umbrella in one hand and the meat container in the other, that is all I could think about. I needed a picture of this wonderful thing and I needed it now. I was already imagining how I would post this picture up to all my social networks to share this amazing thing with all my friends. As fate would have it my phone was inside the house on the charger. I couldn't leave my dad to deal with the drizzle alone; it was my birthday after all. So I stood there and watched that scene with everything I had. I watched as the smoke swirled and swayed in the light, I watched as the Suns’ golden rays bounced off the first green blossoms of spring on the tree, I watched as the effect faded when the clouds shifted, and it was enough. In that moment I realized that sometimes life happens, and as much as our social media oriented selves will wish that we can share it all, sometimes you just need to enjoy the moment. Sometimes we need to let life happen and just be part of it.

Well that’s just another of my online thought bubble. All the best for those end of year commitments guys.