LIFE’S TOO SHORT FOR TOXICITY
23 APRIL 2022
That’s quite a cover image today, right? TV presenter Julia Bradbury took the brave step of recreating the moment her surgeons drew marks on her body ahead of treatment for breast cancer. As she says, it’s the moment she knew she’d never be the same again. The following months of gruelling treatment and of trying to keep the worst of it all from her young children took their toll. But she’s optimistic too. And that’s the thing about a brush with serious illness and/or death – it does indeed change everything but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It alters your priorities and things that once seemed so central and vital to your life no longer occupy the same space. It gives you the impetus to cut things and people out of your life which – to quote Marie Kondo – no longer ‘spark joy’. The hobby you only continue with because your friend once didn’t want to go along on their own; the parties that you dread going to but feel you have to show your face at out of a sense of duty; the coffee mornings that you want to skip but worry your child might get dropped from the school sports team if you don’t turn up; or the visits to toxic people who spend the whole time engaging in vicious gossip and never make the return journey to your house. We say it all the time, but when you are faced with your own mortality you realise that life really is too short. If you sat down every Sunday night and wrote down everything you’d done in the previous week, then marked off the things you could have happily skipped, how many things would you be left with? If you decided that in future you were going to avoid these things, how much extra time would you be freeing up in your life for things you actually want to do? It’s an exercise I’d probably be afraid to do, for fear of facing up to the fact that I do far too many things that I really don’t want to. I’m far better at giving advice than taking it, it seems! Then there’s the people who are in jobs they don’t like. It must be soul-destroying to spend what is a huge chunk of your waking hours doing something you hate. Thankfully it’s not something I ever have to worry about, I love my job. But if I didn’t, I wonder if I’d be brave enough to leave it? It’s a huge move, with potentially farreaching consequences, but you really have to think about the effect of continuing on your mental health, which can of course manifest itself in physical ways too. It really shouldn’t take a health scare to make us evaluate our lives and make changes, but unfortunately our innate Irishness often means that we just go with the flow and are afraid to rock the boat. So take control now, get rid of negativity and live your life the way you want to. Don’t wait until the decisions are forced on you.
Enjoy the issue.