So I had this really beautiful conversation on the weekend with my nan. And I don't get to see my nan often. She lives in Portant Quarry. She's eighty seven. She is on her own. She's been on her own for many, many years, and she lives on her own in a village like assisted living, but not you know, it's not assisted. It's completely independent, like you live alone in a house, but the house is amongst other houses. It's just like a suburb. So it's a retirement village,
but you're in your own house. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a real community there. It's really nice. Got you. But I had this conversation with her. We were up there for my mum's birthday, and makes me upside to think about actually now that I'm thinking about it, but maybe there's a message in this for you guys now, if you're with your grandparents or you have someone in your life. I was asking her what is left on
her bucket list? And not that she's dying or anything, but she'll often bring it up, like, hey, what do you want of mind before I'm going to cark it one day? Like you know, what joy do you want? And I said, hey, Nan, what's your what's on your bucket list? Like I want to do something for you, You tell me and I will tick it off for you. I will make whatever you want happen. And I was prepared for anything, right, like, you know that's fair balloon anything, take me to Morocco.
Now.
My Nan has raised four kids on her own since she was twenty. She has one arm. She lost one arm to polio when she was twenty, and she has just not had an easy life. She didn't have a lot of family around. She was a teacher, she is. She only retired a couple of years ago. She worked a really long time and I don't know what I was expecting. But she thought about it for a second and she said, you know what, I don't have a bucket list, and I said, well, let's make one. She
thought about it again. She said, there is nothing that I would want to do that I haven't already done, or that I'm not doing right now. You know. She looked around and it was my mum's birthday, so all the nieces and nephews were there, like her great grandchildren, her children were there, and we were there, so normal grandchildren. So every layer she had and she said, I've just done everything I want to do, and everything that I want to do left in life I can do right here,
right now. And it was this moment where I was like, wow, Like, you have had it so hard, You've had nothing given to you, you have faced so many challenges, and still to this day you're not complaining and you are finding
such happiness in the little things. And it really made me just think, maybe we just set these expectations so high for ourselves and we're finding all these things for like adrenaline, like we almost need to make ourselves feel something instead of thinking of all these really little moments that are the important moments in the every day.
I think there's something really beautiful in that around perspective, right, Like, I mean, we're definitely we definitely subscribe to the hustle culture or like what's the next thing, the next success, the next thing you're going to tick off. I mean, I also think we're just the generation of lists in general. But I think there's something beautiful in perspective of getting to that age and being able to feel as though all the things that you want in your life you
already have. What a beautiful place to be rather than getting to eighty seven and thinking I have so many things that I want to do and haven't done and will never do, like what you know.
Yeah, And then the other thing that she said was and this is what makes me upset. I guess that maybe life just passes us by. But she said thanks for asking me that. She's like, no one will pray. She's like, no one really talks to me about life anymore, and not.
Like in a what's coming.
Yeah, She's like, it's just sometimes you think like people in your life have lived a whole life. She's eighty seven, she's lived through pandemics, she's lived through wars, she has one arm, she's you know, she's done so much. She's survived polio, and there must be so much to talk about. But sometimes I think you're a little forgotten. And I'm not saying that my family forgets so absolutely not, they're
all so close. But it was just this moment where she's like, yeah, think you know, like people don't ask me about those things or reflections on my life or yeah,
so I don't know. I just thought it was like one of those really important pivotal moments where I was like, oh, you know, I want to talk about this and I want to remind people that if you have those people in your life to have those conversations and find out about you know, the most interesting people in the world are people that have lived.
What did it do for you though, in terms of perspective when you think, like all the things that you want to do, or like the goals that you have and everything else, did it change anything about how you see the priorities in your life?
One hundred percent? It definitely makes me think. My priorities right now have been very heavily and for probably the last decade, have been work related. I've always been very career driven and it's been the number one thing. And she did make me think that career and work is only important if you're sharing it with people or if you're you know, it's like a puzzle. Your life is a jigsaw puzzle, and you need all these things to go together, so as long as ones not overtaking the other.
So it's just one of those food for thought perspective things where I thought, you know what, I want everyone to think about it now and go and ask your your parents or your grandparents, go and ask them something about their life, or something that you really want to know, something you might regret if they did leave this world and you never ask them.
Yeah, that's the opposite to it, isn't it. Usually they're all the questions that you want to ask. When they're not around to ask anymore, or they're not able to answer those questions anymore, that's when you really start thinking about it. But it's really sweet.
I know, I didn't expect to cry then I really took me over