Life’s Bitter, Sweet and Shitty Moments

Life has a strange habit of refusing to stay in one emotional lane. Bitter, Sweet and Shitty Moments are everywhere.

Life brings the clouds, the sunshine and sometimes a whole lot of shit in between — but love has a way of hanging around.

The Bitter, Sweet and Shitty Moments of Life

Just when everything seems settled, somebody falls out with somebody else. Someone dies. A baby is born. A wedding invitation arrives. A relationship ends.

Two people who haven't spoken for years suddenly find themselves standing in the same room because life has decided they need to be there.

And somehow, amongst all of this, the washing still needs doing, someone wants to know what's for dinner, and tomorrow morning arrives whether we're ready for it or not.

Perhaps that's what makes life so incredibly bittersweet.

There are moments we would happily live over and over again. Holding a new baby for the first time. Watching someone we love get married. Sitting around a table when everyone is laughing and, miraculously, nobody is arguing.

A holiday where everything seems easier. An ordinary afternoon that doesn't seem important until years later when we realise we'd give almost anything to sit in that room with those people again.

Then there are the shitty moments.

I don't think there's any point pretending otherwise or finding a prettier word for them.

Some moments simply hurt.

Families fall out over things that sometimes began years earlier and have been carried forward like unwanted heirlooms.

Brothers stop speaking. Sisters remember the same childhood completely differently. Parents become caught between adult children.

Old resentments surface at weddings, funerals and Christmas tables, usually at exactly the moment everyone desperately hoped they wouldn't.

And death has an extraordinary way of rearranging everything.

A funeral can bring people together who haven't seen each other for years. For a few hours, disagreements can seem strangely insignificant beside the reality that someone we knew is simply no longer here.

Stories are told. Photographs appear. Someone remembers something ridiculous and suddenly everyone is laughing when they thought they were supposed to be crying.

Then life begins again.

Sometimes the old disagreements return with it.

Families Are Complicated Because People Are Complicated

We grow up with this idea of family as though it is one permanent thing. But families are constantly changing. Children become adults. Adults become grandparents.

People marry into families and sometimes leave them. New babies arrive carrying pieces of everyone who came before them. Personalities clash. Loyalties shift. People change their beliefs, their priorities and sometimes their entire lives.

Yet somewhere inside us, there can remain an expectation that family should somehow remain the same.

Perhaps that is why family feuds can hurt so deeply. We don't usually expect strangers to understand us completely, but sometimes we expect our families to. When they don't, disappointment can become resentment, resentment becomes distance, and before long, nobody can quite remember where the original disagreement ended, and all the accumulated hurt began.

Years can disappear that way.

And that's the part I find particularly sad.

Because while everyone is waiting for somebody else to apologise, understand, change or admit they were wrong, babies are growing into children, children are becoming adults, parents are ageing, and opportunities to simply be together are quietly disappearing.

That doesn't mean every relationship should be repaired. Sometimes distance is necessary. Sometimes boundaries are healthy. Sometimes people genuinely cannot be together without causing each other harm.

But sometimes we might also ask ourselves a much simpler question:

Is this disagreement worth the years it is costing us?

Births, Weddings and Those Wonderful Little Pauses

Thankfully, life gives us sweet interruptions too.

A birth can temporarily rearrange an entire family's priorities. Suddenly everyone is staring at tiny fingers and discussing who the baby looks like.

A wedding can bring generations together in one photograph. Birthdays, anniversaries, holidays and Sunday lunches create little pockets of time where life seems almost exactly as it should be.

The problem is that we're often terrible at recognising those moments while we're living them.

We photograph them, certainly. We take hundreds of pictures of birthdays, babies, weddings and holidays. Yet sometimes the photograph becomes more important than actually standing there and noticing what is happening.

Maybe we need to become collectors of moments rather than simply collectors of photographs.

The sound of everyone's laughter around the table.

A grandchild reaching for your hand.

Someone dancing terribly at a wedding.

The smell of dinner cooking while people talk in the kitchen.

A conversation that goes on far too late.

Someone saying, Remember when…?

These are tiny things, but perhaps they are the real substance of a life.

Making the Sweet Moments Linger

I've been thinking about how we might make those moments last longer - not literally, because time has never been particularly cooperative about that - but by giving them more of our attention.

Perhaps when something wonderful is happening, we could consciously notice it.

Just stop for a few seconds.

Look around.

Who is here?

What can you hear?

What are people laughing about?

What does this moment feel like?

There is something powerful about quietly telling yourself, I want to remember this.

We could also talk about good memories more often. Families sometimes become incredibly skilled at remembering grievances. We can recite arguments from fifteen years ago with astonishing accuracy, yet beautiful memories are mentioned far less frequently.

Maybe we should reverse that.

Tell the funny stories again.

Bring out the old photographs.

Ask older relatives about their childhood.

Tell children stories about when their parents were young.

Write things down.

Celebrate ordinary gatherings instead of waiting for milestone birthdays or weddings to justify getting everyone together.

And when there is laughter, let it run a little longer.

Don't Give the Shitty Moments All the Best Seats

Bad experiences naturally demand attention. An argument can replay in our minds for days, while a lovely afternoon disappears almost unnoticed. Someone can say twenty kind things and one cruel thing, and somehow it is the cruel sentence that follows us home.

Perhaps part of living well is deliberately refusing to give every painful moment permanent accommodation in our heads.

Acknowledge it. Deal with it where possible. Learn whatever needs to be learned from it.

Apologise when an apology is deserved. Forgive when forgiveness feels possible. Step away when that is healthier.

But don't build the damn thing a guest room.

Life is too short, and our emotional houses are already crowded enough.

The Bittersweetness Is the Point

The older I get, the more I suspect happiness isn't a permanent destination we eventually reach once everything has been sorted out.

There will probably always be something unresolved. Someone will be worried about something. Someone won't be speaking to someone else. Someone will be arriving while someone else is leaving.

Life doesn't wait until everything is perfect before offering us something beautiful.

That may be one of its greatest lessons.

A baby can be born during a difficult year.

Someone can fall in love while grieving someone they've lost.

A family can laugh together at a funeral.

A friendship can begin after another relationship ends.

A beautiful afternoon can exist right in the middle of an absolute mess.

Sweet and bitter aren't necessarily opposites. Often they're sitting beside each other at the same table.

Maybe that's why the sweet moments matter so much.

We cannot prevent every feud. We cannot keep everyone we love. We cannot stop children growing up, marriages changing, families evolving or time marching relentlessly forward.

But we can become better at noticing when life is good.

We can stay at the table a little longer.

We can take the photograph - and then put the phone away.

We can tell someone we're glad they're there.

We can laugh loudly.

We can forgive some things sooner.

We can stop saving affection for funerals.

And every now and then, when everyone we love happens to be gathered together and getting along reasonably well, we can recognise the minor miracle taking place before someone starts an argument.

Because life will always contain the bitter, the sweet and the downright shitty.

We don't get to choose all of it. But perhaps we can choose which moments we allow to linger.

A Thought to Take with You

When you look back over your life, which moments have stayed with you the longest?

And if something sweet is happening in your life right now - even something very small -have you stopped long enough to notice it?

Namaste

Deb xx

Thoughtful writing across life, mind, and meaning.