In a week of funerals I have been contemplating my own mortality and the mystery of life and death.

In seeking to accept aspects of what makes me the person I am, after years of rejection and inner turmoil over my same sex attraction, I wonder sometimes how many more years I can reasonably expect to live.

Perhaps twenty, with reasonably good health and a few more besides – who can know these things?.

What really matters is that I live the days I have happy with self.

I now try to live my life in the peaceful acceptance of how things are, or with a clear intent to find the courage to change the things which I want to be different.

In this period, I have been pondering whether I have had the happiest day of my life already.

I certainly recall my own wedding day to my beautiful young wife and feeling a sense of overwhelming joy that we were married – was that the happiest day of my life?

I recall the birth of my children – each one of these a special day, but accompanied by a sense of anxiety and foreboding at the enormity of the responsibility we had been given – the love you have for your children can really hurt and for me I sensed this right at the start of their lives.

I have a wonderful family, and we have been blessed with many wonderful events at which to hold parties and celebrate, but into all these I carried my wound of non acceptance and fear.

I have had interview successes and examination successes which gave me a sense of achievement and confidence – but I cannot describe these as the happiest day of my life in the context of the family events which I have just related.

I have come to the place where I am foolish to wonder if the happiest day of my life  has been or whether it is still to come.

My focus in the present, will be on trying to make sure that the days that remain are open to the possibility of happiness.

By this I mean, that I am able to bring all of me to whatever life brings, not just on the special days, but everyday.

This means that in my future experience of joy or sadness, I will be fully present in my truth, free from fear, free from skewed judgement on self and others, so in that way even the saddest of days, can have the potential to be the happiest days, because:

I am,

I live,

I love,

I need,

I yearn,

I cry,

I laugh,

I sing,

I sit,

I can!

My next blog will be: Is it a Burden?

William Defoe