The silver lining type

Written Thurs. 8 December 2011

The issue of closure has been on my mind a lot, lately. I’m big on closure – always have been. I need to end one thing conclusively before starting another, especially when it comes to relationships. Closure. Not as scary as we think it is. I think it all depends on how you approach life: are you the silver lining type, or the cloud type? Do you focus on every cloud having a silver lining, or every silver lining having a cloud? To move towards closure, there’s a whole lot of processing that needs to happen. Trying to fast forward the processing can result in loose ends.

Closure is as much a part of life as breathing. Life does indeed go on. In fact, we’re constantly faced with endings and beginnings, birth and death; my philosophy is that, the older you get, and the more life experience you gather, the better you become at dealing with these cycles. And that is one of the most exciting things about this thing called life – the cycles: the new beginnings and the endings and the new beginnings….

I always say that everything has a beginning, a middle and an end, yet most of us live our lives being prepared for only the first two. Even the ultimate goodbye, death, is such a taboo, such a no-go topic for most people, and yet it’s the one thing we can be sure awaits us all. So we delude ourselves that, if we don’t talk about it, it won’t happen. Every relationship has a beginning, a middle and an end: some relationships end with the death of one of the partners, and others with the death - one way or another - of the love that was once shared.

The person I have grown into has an identity unavoidably interwoven with people I’ve been connected to. The challenge is to delicately but decisively unravel, extricate, liberate, and to continue maturing into the Trudy I was always meant to be. I’ve made some promises to myself that I know I will stick to for the rest of my life, because this is the time to break old, stale, counter-productive patterns. This is the time to live my life in an unfettered way, to pursue my goals with faith and vigour, to live my truth boldly, and to step so far out of the box that people’s mouths may drop open in wonder. Haha!

I am consciously opening myself to new energies and embracing opportunities with an almost-childlike curiosity. Tomorrow I make my first-ever television appearance, and I do so as a singer-songwriter. I go into the studio and sing one of my originals, as part of a tv promo for The Taxi, a new online radio station, at a time of day that they’re being broadcast live on Cape Town Television, known as CTV. So yes, I’m grateful for the opportunity afforded me by well-known theatre and media personality, Soli Philander, owner of The Taxi, and looking forward to it like a child anticipating a birthday or Christmas.

And you know those cycles and chakras and alignments and spring tides? Well, I was hanging washing on the line about an hour ago (yes, I do these things at night, when my days are too busy), when I looked up at the sky and saw a huge moon smiling down at me. It must be a day away from full moon – my favourite moon - which means tomorrow is a brilliant day for me to do a tv appearance, because it will be the start of something new, something wonderful.

I suppose it’s clear I’m the silver lining type.