The man that could

I was a misunderstood youth. Part of me now understands that we all are. I was a boy that didn’t know how to be a boy, and a young man that didn’t know he was yet a man.

I found myself growing up escaping into realities of my own creation, through the use and benefit of music and fiction. It was a place that I really could find myself to be- me. I discovered Punk music, metal music, intrumental fiction which could take you on a roller coaster of sound and place you back in your body once it was done with you, only to discover I never really left, just found a way to escape for a little while. Sometimes it felt like a dream, but dreams couldn’t be this real, could they?

I came across a band named Northlane, a metal core band founded in Sydney. Despite never hearing of this band before, It felt as though the songs they wrote and the sounds they made, and even the band itself- was created for me, as if I had a found a way to send them through time and space, to guide me a journey I hadn’t realised I was a part of yet. A song of theirs on the album Singularity, named Quantum Flux; hit me the hardest, speaking of the realisation that the joy of life is right before our eyes. People walking around blindly, like children in the dark- to which I could wholeheartedly relate to at this point in time, and often still do.

My Dad had just passed away to a rare cardiovascular disease, to which it had found it’s way through my extended family also, finding a way to teach all of us to suffer in different ways. Leaving me lost and confused, pushing away the ones that I cared about, and most importantly my own self. I didn’t realise it consciously at the time but I was running away from me. Filtering my thoughts into a series of disassociating events that helped me manage moment to moment without the constant thought of ending myself.

The journey of loss is a long and tedious road, that each of us will face and manage differently. That’s part of the beauty of life, it’s for each of us to decide our story, as we all are our own protagonist or antagonist, angel or demon, God or Devil, and so on. I still face the struggles of my past but each day I keep my head high and push on through the storm with kind eyes, hoping to see them looking back at me.

The music of Northlane and others; I.e; Architects, Bring me The Horizon, Paramore, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, The Eagles, and many more, were guiding forces on my path of discovery that we are all living a story of lessons. A journey of loss, discovering what it means to find what has been lost, and then losing it all over again. Choosing our sacrifice, or as some would call our suffering. There is always going to be a balance of life and the choice is yours to decide what you want that balance to be.

We never really do know what’s around that corner; and I have found solitude in that. As the only real influence we have over our lives is in the present moment in which we exist; the past makes up who we are, based off of lessons & experience, and the future is created from the things we endure, but we can’t change either of them, we simply can only react to the actions of the moments we exists in.

The music that I found in these developmental years showed me that we all have a choice, and the choice I will continue to make is to love. Not because it’s easy, but because it’s worth it; not for myself but for those around me that are suffering to create a better life for themselves, just as we all are. And for the entirety of humanity and nature itself- we are all one in this Universe. A cosmic consciousness trying to understand itself in the form of different vibrating frequencies, manifested through light.

So I choose to love; as if it is all A version of myself. Not because it is I, but because I treat it all as I wish to be treated, with love, empathy, compassion and respect.

I’m not perfect, maybe no one really is, all I know is if we never fail we never learn. So I accept myself as I am, and will continue to love like it’s my last breath, because you never know when your time will expire.

Thank you for the beautiful opportunity to express my Self. I hope these words are greeted with joy.

Yours Faithfully,

Harrison Noah Sutcliffe.