Reading · A fishmongers daughter

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Have you ever thought, wouldn’t it be nice if I could just skip to the good part?

Skip the uncertainty, the messy stuff.
Skip the wrong turns.
The heartbreak, the waiting, the rebuilding.

“I just want to fast-forward to the part where everything finally makes sense and it all feels easy, thank you very much.”

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But actually, would it?

Because if we only watched the last scenes of a movie, or read the last chapter of a book, it would be pretty rubbish.

We wouldn’t understand the story, or what it had taken to get to where they are.

We wouldn’t know the characters, or why they had made the choices they made.

We wouldn’t fully feel the relief, the love, the triumph or the joy.

We wouldn’t understand why this bit feels so good.

The last scenes or chapters only mean something because of everything that came before.

The loves.
The losses.
The heartbreaks.
The reinventions.
The battles.
The courage.

It doesn’t mean the painful parts were good.

Some chapters are messy, incredibly tough and downright unfair.

Some are not chapters we would ever choose to live through again, or wish on our worst enemy.

But they become part of the story. Our story. The periods of deepest learning and transformation.

They show us our character.

They reveal the character of the people around us.

They shape our compassion, our resilience and our ability to appreciate what we may once have taken for granted.

The journey is what makes the good part feel so much more meaningful when we finally arrive.

So don’t wish your life away waiting to skip to the good part.

The journey is what gives the good part its meaning, and makes it so much more than just good.

With love,
Abigail x