People are born and people die, this isn’t a new fact of life. Sometimes people suffer towards the end of their life, or their life is (in our opinion) ending before we want it to.

As children’s nurses, the law of averages (and common sense) means we often get to witness this suffering and see lives ending at much earlier ages than we would expect.

I try to live as though tomorrow is not guaranteed, which it isn’t.

When I speak like this, most people brush it away or put it down to the usual ‘spiritual’ nonsense people spout from quotes they read off the internet. In the eyes of society, it seems by saying ‘tomorrow is not certain‘ you are labelled as being negative, as you’re alluding to the biggest taboo topic of all (dying).

In the UK and USA (or, the ‘west’) people are in one big rush. One huge desire to live because we only have one life and we don’t have time to stop.

We are taught that anything ‘bad’, such as being different, being alone, breaking up from your spouse or even death, are taboo subjects and if you ever find yourself experiencing any of these taboo subjects people will often tell you to ‘keep busy’, ‘take your mind off it’, ‘have a drink’ or ‘get a takeaway’. Pretty much anything if it means avoiding the issue, whatever it may be.

We’re told these are good coping mechanisms when experiencing the catastrophes of life.

Have you noticed nobody ever tells you to sit in a room on your own with your eyes closed and face the issue?

Hardly ever, because that means you’d have to face these ‘taboo’ thoughts. No, we must push them deep down and never talk about them. They’re not appropriate. 

In the East (India, Tibet etc) they believe in reincarnation. Everyone in the east is so laid back they horizontal, because they think that if there is no time on THIS life, there will be time in the next.

Life is short and precious and you don’t need to be a children’s nurse to see that.

I think when we push these ‘taboo’ topics deep down, or we ignore the ‘elephant in the room’ so to speak, this can lead to a build up of illogical behaviour (which leads us to label these behaviours e.g ‘anxiety, depression’) that we then spend lots of money on trying to get rid of (through therapy, self help guides etc).