Three Days, Three Quotes Challenge – Day 1

Thank you to my friend, Novus Lectio, for her nomination. As I may have mentioned before, she is an enviably curious-minded individual who fathoms truth in all places, taking on fascinating and noble pursuits of knowledge. Her blog is a veritable smorgasbord of poetry, artistic talent, stories and much, much more. Well worth checking out!

The Rulebook:

1. Thank the person who nominated you.
2. Post a quote for three consecutive days (1 quote for each day) – no promises with keeping this rule. As you know, rules are like long uphill paths for me. I find them too tiring to follow! (But I promise, I will try my best!)
3. Nominate three bloggers each day.

 

This first quote was first uttered to me by a legend. At least back then, in the baby-teeth weeks of uni life, she was a legend.

She was sprawled in cannabis bliss across the impossibly narrow beds of the University’s halls of residence, sucking a stonking spliff, and letting the grassy smoke dance a mambo of flexing, heady revolutions about her face.

Armed to the roach with insouciant slurs, she weaved yarns of her worldly journeys. She spoke of her treks through the jungle, the seasonal rains thundering down turning pathways into streams. She spoke of living with tribes in their villages among them, dancing their dances, cooking their food, learning their ways. She spoke of learning history and meeting people and visiting incredible temples. Through her footsteps, she had improved life for those less fortunate; building shelters, giving money, publicising the crises. Her words were needles of inspiration. We have one life to see this great blue-green marble swirly-gig we call home, and try to make a difference, in whatever little way we can.

“But really, me?” I asked. “A gossamer sproutling of a person—how could a fleck of a person, like me, ever have the confidence to step foot outside the norm like you have?”

Chugging ganja like a choo-choo, eyes half shut, she spoke the words that have stayed with me for so many years:

“It is the things you don’t do that you regret more than the things you do.”

It took one whole year. One whole year of scraping and living on the cheap, and not drinking, not spending, but it didn’t bother me, because one year later, I had pulled together enough to make a tender, young thought into a thriving fully-fledged reality.

I had a half-purse budget, an old banger and a navy blue two-man tent across my shoulders—and on the 7^th July 2007, I opened my door, and my foot finally stepped outside the norm.

This marked the beginning; the moment when my goal posts moved to encompass the entire world. Anyone can do it—even a gossamer sproutling of a person on a half-purse budget. I have not regretted a single footstep, not even the muddy leech-infested ones, and she was the legend who tempered my outlook.

HOWEVER, and it is a fairly significant, however. I do not suggest that this quote should be blindly followed—after all, if my dear friend still smokes those stonking spliffs, she might well have something to regret in a decade or three!

Nominees:

Ward Clever

Mel Gutiere

Jack Bratley