When we are growing and learning about life, we learn every element to the good and less good. We don’t often recognise what is to the good and what potentially is going to hurt us and others along the way.

We learn from our experiences, we are given opportunity to learn and find ways to make life work, short term and long term. The problem we find with life is that we can be included in elements we would prefer to miss out, we might find ourselves living in this imperfect world, perfectly well and still face great ordeals of conscience and great ordeals which place our integrity in jeopardy.

We do not make our world, and often where we grow and develop, we are in a world which might be corrupt. We live and survive by following the patterns we know will work, and often we do things we would prefer not ever to have been involved. This world does not make the process of living easy.

We can find even in the worst cases, a way to get out, or if we stay we may be driven mad, or become so enmeshed no way out is possible without harm to ourselves or to our loved ones. There is never an easy solution and never an easy way to move on.

When we are faced with challenges which might test our very purpose of living, we carry on and continue to act against our nature. When we are under threat, what we imagine or even real threat, we can be mindful of the risks to ourselves and others.

Many people do things they do not wish to, many people have to conform, for if they do not, their lives are lost, or as worse their lives are not worth living.

Anyone who understands why people will flee, and move away and become a refugee in the sense that life is impossible, and they cannot stay, then we start to understand the real dilemma for many millions.

Sometimes people find their politics are wrong, sometimes people find they have the wrong colour skin, and sometimes people are just not liked and even hated for what they represent. The worst is to struggle to survive in a regime which corrupts and the only way to survive is to become corrupted too. For we then join in and find our path to peace and self worth is lost each and every day.

It takes a strong personality and strong heart to make a move so intrinsic and fundamental, to move on and let go. We never know quite how hard this is until we face those dilemmas ourselves.

We find our natural prejudice is not with the dissenter, we find allegiance where we find order. And some old orders are so corrupt it takes forever to understand there is any problem at all.

The world is not fond of heretics, the world does not reward bravery, it favours often the coward who might conform, and the ones who can be moulded to regimes and societies which do not let free will breath.

We only know most of this in hindsight and we learn only from experience what it is to be an outsider, it takes years for some to recover and make their world work again. And we need be mindful how difficult it is, for one person to go against all that surrounds them. The betrayals to reality are profound, the move to truth as necessary.

No one wants to reward disloyalty, and it goes against our codes of living to break out of bad relations as much as we might need to simply because we will die more inside each day if we stay.

Hard times to be a refugee, any time any place anywhere, where a world is suspicious and you are suspicious of the world. Strong reminders to faith and truth and finding peace in honest dealing, it comes with practice and with years of personal atonement for endeavours we might wished never upon a living soul.

When we encounter those who are doing their best in the hardest situations, to be excluded from their old lives, we need be mindful that integration takes time. There are often backward glances to the past and how life was when conforming, and old behaviour to let go. We get better at many ways of living as we develop our outlook a day at a time to a new future. A new future is as hard to establish as an old past. For we are forged from and were made in the past, new days and ways of living do not come easy. We relearn life, we relearn how we might be.

We learn to rest ghosts and get new perspective. Some people never learn how to learn again and become stuck in their old ways, and so live as if dead. Others adapt, and I guess youth has its advantage here, for we can in our youth move more easily to new futures. As time and our old lives are really burdens, moving on can be the hardest thing to do.

I have spoken to many who are making moves to futures they might never have dreamt possible. And yet the old ways and old days have their mark on today’s behaviour.

It takes us a lifetime to this moment in time and a lifetime to move to our new reality, each day and every day, the shocks are enormous and profound. Never underestimate the shock to our systems, some take years others just moments to find recovery.

Recovery is as long as it takes, and new ways to keep living well do not fall into play with ease. Those who suggest it is easy to change, well they are most likely in denial about what another attempts to do. Old patterns let go, new patterns come in take time and need time to embed. Experience develops skill and expertise.

Ask an artist to paint with their other hand, or write with your less favoured hand and see how long it takes to become as skilled with the others.

Ask a man with one leg lost to walk as he did before. It will never be the same again. That is what we learn and if we are lucky that is what we can adapt. Some things never come back, we find new ways to live.

Our mind is our most utilised organ in the body, do not be surprised when something in it stops working, it will take a lifetime to compensate, to change and find our balance again.

I am glad my lifetime a day at a manageable day, it provides the best opportunity to allow this to happen. And this is my fortune. Not everyone has fortune like me, although they are living, they are already dead.

The living dead are around us all the time, they have lost their will to adapt and change to where our world is going, or they prefer to bury their heads as no more change will ever sink in and through.

We can be dinosaurs in our modern world in no time as all the world is moving so quickly. Even if we are adept at moving along, we will never assume the authority and skill of our younger generations who absorb change as it occurs. We are fallible human beings.

Retirement from life is no option, so we keep some of life always the same, our connections and preferences. We are indeed fortunate where we can do this in life. Most have to adapt or wither.

The age of change, chaos, reason, and simply life passing us by, it is all happening all over this world.

To find contentment and easiness in life with change forever occurring, with or without our acceptance of it. Well I can confirm there is a path to contentment and that is in how we view living and our easiness is how we move with life and not against the flow of life.

Living life, moving with it, knowing what we can and cannot change, developing our wisdom of doing, integral life skills. Not given to us, learned from our nurture, nature provides our capacity as nurture teaches us how. Our endeavour makes all possible within our understanding of today and this perfect imperfect world.

What does not break us makes us stronger, is utter bollocks, what develops and makes us adept, makes life more workable a day at a time, the real now, now and forever. The truth of living is perceiving and making the best sense of everything we encounter with an open mind. Sometimes we change our outlook and the process need forgive every moment we have lived to that point or no progress can be made.

When we change everything, we move through nothing to something. For survivors of such changes these dramatic times test every element we have, and we are never unscathed by life’s touch.

Our outlook pragmatic helps, life will never be the same fro day to day, its change is subtle to most, mind blowing often when great changes sweep away the past, shocks to our system inevitable.

Give yourself time to assimilate, and time to regroup. The world offers no time, as change is irreversible and constant. We get good with life or it certainly will pass us by and the opportunity to find harmony decreases as we get stuck in unhelpful old thinking. Let go and move on? As your feeling and thinking will allow and so enable new outlooks. The rush to be well and conversant can catch many unawares as frustration is always calling us back to the past. So with firm grip on this day let the new one in and the old simmer away, till only the good is utilised.

Living it’s a caution, and every new day will bring challenge to our path of honest endeavour in a darker world where light can become dark in the blink of an eye. Steady nerve and feel fear, and do what can be done with open mind even when the heart might thump with a heavy beat.

Keep on going and don’t give up. Life has its specialities, living it the greatest challenge, learning is eternal and mastery never achieved. How else would we want it, sometimes just enough time to catch our breath might be good. And we can when we apply our right size to our right sized world, our size fits all.