So, I was thinking about the topic of loss and breakups(I know I'm a ball of fun). This idea that one day you could be sharing your life with someone, your time, your energy, your emotions, your thoughts and the next they are just a contact on your phone, somebody that you used to know. You used to know what they were doing at 11am on a Saturday morning, what they had for dinner that evening, the book they were reading - but now you are just strangers, just 2 of the 7.4 billion people going through life; breathing in the same air but too far from each other to talk about how it tastes. Let me ask you what feeling this evokes in you- If you’ve never experienced it, I’m sure you could probably imagine it. After just having gone through a breakup myself I can definitely say that it evokes a feeling of sadness and I don’t know how to put it anymore insightfully that that – the ‘here now, gone tomorrow’ nature of relationships is sad. But when I explored this further, I realised it wasn’t just sadness, like it was deeper than that, more profound than just sadness. I feel like the feeling that arises in us when we experience loss points to a realisation of a deeper truth – which is that, life itself is fleeting and indeed so is everything within it. Solomon captures the essence of this in Ecclesiastes: - “Life is fleeting, like a passing mist. On the onset this seems like a rather depressing lesson to grasp – what’s the point of investing in relationships and giving ourselves to love or indeed to anything if it is all fleeting anyway, if today it will be here but tomorrow it will not? As humans we were made to long for a forever kind of thing, we have ‘eternity in our hearts’ yet the one thing that seems to promise us forever seems to be sleeping on us – love. I desired a love that lasted forever and the ring that rested on the fourth finger of my left hand seemed to guarantee it; except it didn’t. So what is the point - what is the point in getting into relationships because we want forever when all they do is bring heartache? Well perhaps the fault is not in our desires but in what we look to, to fulfill them. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing C.S Lewis You see earthly relationships only tickle this desire that we have within us for forever, they only make us aware and in touch with this desire within us to give our whole hearts to something and for this ‘something’ to honor the magnitude of receiving our whole heart - by staying.
Earthly relationships echo the forever we long for but they themselves are not the forever. Even if you were to marry the love of your life and never get divorced, one of you would eventually die and the desire for forever would still be left unfulfilled. So, if it is not earthly relationships that fulfill our longing for forever, what is it, because logic and the laws of nature tells us that there must be something - 'Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists’ I believe that this thing is God; the only one, the only concept known to man to promise forever and deliver. And I don’t write this post to get you to believe the same and I am not a theologian, so I won’t go too much further into this idea. But let me leave with you this piece of advice, that I hope you can adopt whether you believe in a God or you don’t: Touch everything with your whole heart. If it is a man that you are loving, do it with your whole heart. If it art that you are creating, do it with your whole heart. If it is a poem you are writing, do it with your whole heart. If it is a career that you are in, do it with your whole heart. Because I think that to do things with passion, is the only way to live. It is the only way to inspire others When you look at the people who inspire you, the people that are excelling in the field that you perhaps want to excel in – I can promise you the one thing they all have in common is passion, because passion translates to excellence; every time. You have more to lose when you live with passion, but I promise you that you have so much more to gain. All my love Mayfair x
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Hello beautiful people, so in this post I’m going to explain why I’ve decided to give up makeup. I wanna make it clear that I have nothing against makeup or anyone who wears it – this is just part of what’s going on in my own heart and I thought I’d share it with you guys.
So for those of you who don’t know, I am a Christian. This of course doesn’t mean I am perfect and it’s not even what I’m striving for. For me, this means that I am choosing to let the word of God and what He says about me shape who I am (Romans 12:2) – not societies beauty standards, not the views of some mis-educated little boy, not even my own thoughts which sometimes come from a place of insecurity and self-condemnation but His word alone. And what does His word say about me?
It’s clear that God see’s me as totally beautiful and as I started to meditate on these words I wanted to see myself how He see’s me more and more. I wanted to be confident enough in how he made me and not have to hide or make myself look any more perfect than he already made me; with my uneven skin tone, my dark spots and my round face. I wanted to embrace all of it, in all circumstances – first thing in the morning when it’s just me and God, walking through campus when I bump into all my friends, at a big event with every guy I’ve ever had a crush on, on my wedding day with all of my loved ones, looking into the eyes of my forever on earth…all of it – bare faced and bold! I want to be a living, breathing example that in a word that bombards us with unattainable beauty standards, you can still love yourself – exactly as you are! Please know that this isn’t me saying that if you wear makeup you don’t love yourself and I certainly didn’t hate myself when I wore makeup, rather what I am saying is that I want my love for the beauty that God gave me and my acceptance of it to be shown on the outward, as a sign of what is going on inside. I want to be a symbol to my daughters that just as they are, they are enough, I want them to learn to take more time molding the inside than the outside. I want them to know that red lips are beautiful but only in a different way to brown lips, I want them to know that even on the days they look in the mirror and all they see are the parts they wish they could change, their heavenly father still smiles on them and whispers ‘I wouldn’t change a thing about you’ and to sometimes let this very truth be their shield instead of L'Oreal and Mac. So that’s where I’m at, I hope you hear my heart behind this post and that it challenges and inspires you in some way. I also want to appreciate my youth mentor I had from a few years ago who’s words and boldness in her bare faced beauty fills me with awe – You’re amazing Zanele. I’ll leave you guys with a short piece written by a dear friend of mine which I hope encourages you as much it encouraged me: You are not body. You are temple. You are shrine. You are history presented presently in the midst of an all too unappreciative world looking too far into a future they cannot hold, forgetting that you are memory made flesh. Memory of a time where bare face was epitome and naked was worship. You are unwritten history quietly living among us. ~ Spoken.jpg (I think you’re beautiful.) As always, I love to hear from you guys so drop me a message through my contact page of simply drop a comment and let’s start a discussion. All my love Mayfair x |
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