As the Olympics draw to a close after two weeks of great competition, sportsmanship and sheer joy for most of Britain at how our sportsmen and women have performed, we will take time tonight to celebrate their dedication, their struggle and their achievements.
It is a time for Britain to be proud. After all the worry, the last minute disaster (G4S) and the seemingly unorganised and untried security and transport, it all came together .. and in the end the headlines have been all about the sports. That is how is should be and thankfully has been.
From the volunteers, to the soldiers drafted in at the last minute, to the giants of sports and to the minnows of sports, who have shone, and succeeded we say thank you.
There is a lesson in life to be learned here. We will never achieve if we do not try. We may try and fail but the success has come from the very fact we tried and the real hero’s are not always the one’s left clutching the medals.
Life is a struggle at times, all of us at some point find ourselves struggling against the tide of life and what it brings us and takes from us.
Sometimes, even when it looks as if we are sailing we are like the proverbial duck, paddling frantically just to stay afloat.
The feeling of frustration and anger fill us as the stress builds and it becomes difficult to see any end to it and we become our own worst enemy, wanting to hide, wanting to run, wanting to live anyone else’s life but ours… but we just have to believe that someday the darkness will give way to light and our view on life and our feelings will change and come alive again.
Sometimes we just have to keep going, taking one step after another, just keeping moving forwards.
Yesterday I visited the National Gallery of Modern Art to visit an exhibition on the works of Edvard Munch, more famous for his work “The Scream”. It was a very interesting visit for me as his life had been full of very dramatic moments that shaped his work and his mind. The surprising thing for me was that I felt I understood him. His work is dark, driven by the demons in his soul, but it made sense, it seemed that he was painting and printing from his emotion. His prints are repeated beside each other, the same picture, but with different colours. It was like looking straight into his mind, the dark pictures giving a whole different mood from the ones with colour. It just made sense… it was HIS journey but one that I know so well.
Brae. A gay woman's tale! 