Life's ladder

 *"I ain't no angel, I still got a few more dances with the devil. I'm cleanin' up my act little by little, I'm getting there, I can finally stand the man in the mirror I see. I ain't as good as I'm gonna get, but I'm better than I used to be."* **- ***Tim McGraw*** -** *** *** That's me in the photo, climbing a ladder that sort of goes nowhere; I don't know what I was thinking. This photograph was taken just before I turned four years-old in the *back yard* at the property on which I was raised. You'll see it's all fields and not much else, I was raised just outside a small rural town in Australia with flat-land farming on three sides and rolling hills and vineyards on the last. It was a legit upbringing, a nice place to be a kid and, despite having some turmoil in my younger years, I was happy and certainly was when this photo was taken, I had zero fucks to give and was just living life. I look happy right? Over my life I have faced many adversities and challenges, some of which almost ended me completely and some, whilst serious by nature, I was able to cope with and even thrive because of. The first was the racial vilification I suffered from the moment I went to school, around six or so months after this photo was taken. It was brutal, something I didn't understand, and it caused me great heartache, fear and uncertainty about who I was as a human. Don't feel sad though, it was one of the best things that could have happened to me. I learned from that terrible, destructive and disgusting behaviour my fellow humans handed me and as I climbed life's ladder I used those lessons to my advantage. In fact, I learned from every difficult event, every bad action conducted against me and every single thought, attitude and action I ever had or took over my entire life. That's the only way I knew how to live. When I look back on my life I know I was/am taking ownership and responsibility but at the time, as a boy, adolescent and even (sometimes) as a grown-ass man, it just seemed the logical thing to do and so I did it. (Mostly.) As time moved so did I, *up life's ladder,* (sometimes sideways and backwards too), and I'd use what I learned previously to make it easier, more productive and effective and to move towards better outcomes in general and a better version of myself...it's called continual improvement and I got really good at it. But I fucked up so many times as well; I failed miserably, quite recently too, and with a person I love deeply. That's the thing with life, it doesn't always, (or ever) really go one hundred percent to plan. I didn't know that when this photo was taken though, I was ~~clueless~~ innocent. I'm not now though, like all of us, life has marked me indelibly, left deep scars that I will carry forever - life will add to those too, like the one most recently that...well, never mind, I don't want to say. No matter what hand life deals us we need to move on through it, (I need to as I know no other way). That's the only way for us to get to the other end of it and have half a chance of looking back without the chains of regret binding us. Looking at that kid in the image above, the *me I was back then in 1973*, I wish I could go back and make myself see life through the eyes of the future me at fifty three years-old. How different my life would be...but then, would it? I'd probably just have made different choices and life would still have thrown challenges in my path. It's a futile thought-process though I guess, either way life has to be experienced, mistakes made and lessons learned...and we need to succeed and fail as we climb, or fall from, the ladder. *** *** I don't know how many rungs are on my life-ladder, or what I'll find when I get to my last one, but I know I've lived them all as best I can based on what I knew and who I was at the time. I've lingered too long and not long enough on some of them, skipped some and revisited others, and along the way I've seen myself more clearly and become just a little ***better than I used to be***. If you have any comments at all please feel free to share them below. You can be as open or closed as you like, it's your comment and I'll respond either way. If you have any thoughts just share them, I enjoy the engagement. Thanks for reading.