Hi friends! I hope you’re well…but if you’re feeling a little meh about life at the moment, I have something fun to share.
Last weekend, we stayed at our favourite beach in the world, and I snapped this photo above of our two sons and their current girlfriends. I love this photo because it’s a life lesson and a universal truth.
These beautiful kids of ours are chalk and cheese. Can you see it?
On the left, our eldest: the serious, studious couple — soon to be management consultant and investment banker — inspecting some kind of sea urchin.
On the right, the youngest: the ‘Life is a beer commercial’ couple — one studying Exercise and Sport Science at uni, the other a promising female boxer.
All of us are so wildly unique.
Two boys from the same parents, same beach, same day, same moment in time…but so very different.
It’s an old idea, but crucial to remember:
No one can do the job of being you but you.
The little quirks, the way you see the world, your special knack for sharing someone’s sorrow or joy, the best thing about you (and the worst) — that’s all you. And your perspective is so needed in the world.
I don’t know how you feel, but I get so, so tired by the exhausting TaDa! of everyone’s sparkly internet lives…the beautiful photos, the relentless sharing of all the perfect things and perfect days.
I wish we could pause and strip away all the curated sharing, open our front doors and invite each other in.
Life is so, so good, we’d say…we have all this: running water, safety, food on the table, sometimes pain but sometimes joy.
And life is also hard, we’d remind each other: worries about families and self and all the secrets we rarely share.
But we’re here, with a chance to be wholly ourselves, completely unique, fabulous and flawed…and this is one life is ours.
It’s wild and precious, just like Mary Oliver so famously wrote. And we’re the only ones who can be ourselves. So on we go, loving all the people we’ve been given to love.
I hope you enjoy your beautiful Sunday.
Love, Catherine x
PS. The fun stuff!
It’s Father’s Day in Australia: we’re barbecuing a whole salmon and making Mussels Cocotte, an easy recipe from Burgoo, in Vancouver. (The link will take you back to my author website, to a post written a few years ago…) I’ve changed a lot!
Eyeliner is hard for me to figure out, but these two make it so much easier: LOVE this one in Striking Navy and this one, too.
Oh, re-read this poem by Mary Oliver if you ever feel alone or blue. It starts with this: “You do not have to be good” and ends with the famous line, “What will you do with your one wild and precious life?”