[I asked my friend Helen to write a post a few weeks back because she has a gift when it comes to writing.  She is deep and sweet at the same time.  It's hard to believe she is so young.  She's an old soul, huh?  You can read more from her on her blog Inward Sun.]

Dear Andy,

It’s been a while since I welcomed your invitation to write a guest post.

I had many ideas at first but every time I sat down to get it down in writing it felt…fake.

Thoughts that were meant to be insightful felt rushed and made up.

What do I know about life and death?

What credibility do I have when I spread advice around me like leaves in the wind, but when the same wind blows; I change my sails in its direction?

Am I really one to talk about suffering, or sacrifices, when every time I am vaguely sensing pain, I hide inside a shelter of repair.

Too scared to get scared.

All this time, the real heroes are the ones that live to tell the tale, rather than telling the tale for others to live?

But here I am none the less, writing. Do you remember I said that the keys are in our hands, or in this case, underneath my fingertips? Well, this is me gradually opening the door and respectfully asking for your permission to join you in the room.

I do not know how it feels to lose a partner, a friend, a loved one, all in one. I do not know what it is like to breathe in the absence of that person, or to see the presence of the same person, in a child’s eye.

I may not understand so many things about this crazy world we put our prospect in.

But I know this and I know it by experience:

Everything changes.

Some changes sneak up on us; others hit us right in the face. But the fact remains, nothing stays the same. (Or maybe some things do, somehow, in a greater perspective, but will we live to tell that tale? I don’t know)

Why are we so afraid of change? Why does it feel like every time we have just made out something from the picture, our world flips again and stirs up our view, like snow in a glass bulb with ourselves in the middle?

Change is hard to accept because in the movie played out in our heads, we travel light years every day. Every change sparks an idea that conceives another and there we are…time travelling. Back and forth we go, rewinding what was in the past, fast forwarding into a film directed future and forgetting the ultimate truth:

There is only Now.

We are just not there!

And I guess that is ok. I guess that is a choice, the only choice for Now.

Ironic isn’t…? Everything turns in our favor…

Without pain there wouldn’t be a force of power.

Without frustration there wouldn’t be rock music.

Without desire there wouldn’t be passionate sex.

Without self pity there wouldn’t be pleasure in complaining.

Without fear, we wouldn’t know love.

Because without fear for loss, we really don’t have anything.

We can’t stop the season from changing, the infinite snow flakes around us from falling, but we can acknowledge their purity, their ability to change form, to dissolve and disappear, to live and die in elegance.

That is how I look at life and death.

But then again, it is all just in my mind’s eye.