Earlier this year I went to Bestival, a festival set on a picturesque island called The Isle of Wight.
While I was there among many lovely people I met, one that stood out the most was this lovely Spanish guy called Lemon. Yup, Lemon. Lemon (definitely his real name) had had the misfortune of losing all his stuff just before arriving at the festival. I am talking serious loss here - phone, passport, wallet and a notebook with all his poems. If that was me I'd probably still be crying. To add insult to injury he was due to leave the country and now had no ID and no money.
I asked him how he was coping and how come he was so upbeat and he just smiled and said 'This too shall pass.' When he first lost all his things he was devastated (rightly so!), but he remembered all the things he still had.
Things that couldn’t be lost like friends, families and memories. The value of these were far greater than what he had lost so he knew in time he'd get over the material possessions. I thought that was really beautiful and honestly, it inspired me.
I’ve made this my quote of the week as next time I'm in an unfortunate predicament or something goes wrong I'd like to just be able to remember this and carry on. Sometimes life just isn’t that easy, but I’d like to think that this will inspire me to reduce my breakdown period, even if only by a few moments. It also made me remember which things are truly important in life even though we put so much emphasis on things that aren’t.
What about you guys - what gets you through hard times and what are your favourite inspirational/motivational quotes?
