"What have you done to-day to make you feeeeeeeel proud"

It's so easy to say: "WOAH! That was so inspiring!" but it's so much harder to act upon it.

I heard about Stephen's Story a few days before my 19th birthday in April. I clicked on his page and saw a pioneer - someone who was desperate to live life, to help others and have fun whilst doing it.

I began to read profusely about him, typing his name into Google and finding everything about who this incredible teenager was. What I saw written on various webpages was that he was a 19 year old with incurable cancer. What I read in my mind that he was the same age as me.

This birthday, I did something I've never done before. Every birthday, after presents and cake and, sometimes, a party my birthday is over. That's it and life just goes on. Birthdays are just markers: a day in the year to break up the routine of life. A day when I can tell myself that I can eat absolutely anything I want in any quantity I desire.

But this year, as I turned 19 on my own at midnight, I decided to be different. The story of Stephen Sutton was in the back of my mind and I made a list of things I wanted to do before I turned 20 and was officially not a teenager anymore.

It made this birthday, more than any other, feel so special and I got into the habit of telling myself: "If this was your last day on earth would you feel like it was a good end? Would you leave with no regrets?" and words to this effect:

It was a little bit morbid at first, as though at any moment or any morning I could wake up and it might be my last. But it was the most motivating thing for me. 

I started doing little things: like making sure that I met up with friends at every opportunity, and started planning for bigger things: like my first 5k run. 

I began desiring for new experience and grabbing everything I had the opportunity to. A few weeks ago, I became the Recruitment and Outreach Officer for our university RAG society with exactly that same mentality. If I had the opportunity to run for something and make a difference, now was the time to do it. 

And low and behold, I was successful!

But what was most important for me was that I not only looked to the future, but remembered what I had already done. I didn't just want to have plans to do things and then when they were done, they were done. I wanted to have something to hold onto. I wanted to know what I'd already achieved and how I could build on them so that, even if I didn't achieve the things on my list that I'd planned, I still knew that I'd been somewhere. 

And for all of this there was no inspiration quite like that of Stephen Sutton's story and his optimism. When I read the update that his mum put on the page this morning, I cried. There was such a rich emotion attached to Stephen that was felt by everyone. I felt like mountains had been moved and everyone had this drive to support what Stephen did and what we were all doing by donating and raising awareness for the Teenage Cancer Trust. 

For me, knowing about Stephen gave me a kick, to do things that were new to me and things I'd always been meaning to do. To take more of those experiences and to love life even more! 

Do more, love more, be more! 

The Con - lessons learnt from the imminent release of Tracey Connolley

The average person in the UK has a life span of around 80 years, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) who make estimates that men live for around 77.8 years and women live for 81.9. I'm 18. I have, potentially, 63 more years at life. I'm lucky and, if you're alive today, you are too. Others are not so. Baby P, as he was nationally known, lived only 1 year and 5 months. That's over 75 years of potentially life changing decisions and energy lost and wasted.

But what is more shocking, in the grander scheme of things, is that Peter Connolley didn't have a choice. Before he could even be in control of his life, it was taken away from him. I am, now, as independent as I ever have been. I'm at Uni. But that's not to say I'm fully unconstrained. No human is fully individual. There are people; friends, families, colleagues and other, abstract concepts which mean that we shall never be eternally free. The decisions we make everyday usually are formed due to the restraints that are put on us by other people. If I wanted a cheese toastie with ketchup, as do my flatmates, making it wouldn't be the only stumbling block which involved me making a decision. One of the first points of call would be; Do I actually need this? This is a simple and commonly used sentence, not least by people like me. But the reason that I would have asked myself that question is because I am bound by a series of transcendent connections. Do I actually need this would be a question that derived from the fact that those extra calories could make me put on a few pounds. Worse, it could lead to a break out of spots. Would it be worth it? Would my friends notice? By these questions alone, I would be bound.
  If I then went on to eat the sandwich, slicing the cheese and allowing the molten wax to dribble from the toastie machine, I would still be bound. Where should I eat it?
  Questions, as well as people and attachments, keep us far from freedom. So, if we are never free and always, though begrudgingly, reliant on something; is it ok for those attachments to dictate us? Should we listen? Should we take notice to the point that we could die?

Baby P was innocent. And, in the grand scheme of things, he has reached a more attainable freedom through death than anyone alive can have a hope of knowing.

So what is it to be free? There is no such thing on earth. I believe you can never be free; just free-er. Tracey Connolley is to walk 'free'. A 6 year term for the death of a baby doesn't seem much. Think back 6 years. A lot can happen. In the first 6 years of my life I learnt to walk, to eat, to go for a wee on the toilet rather than in a nappy. I learnt to sing, to laugh, to smile, to run, to watch TV, to count, to write, to play, to draw, to love. A lot of things. And these are the fundamental aspects of my childhood. These are the things Baby P didn't get.
  I could count the mistakes I've made too. I could count the purposeful wrong. However morbid, if Tracey Connolley were to repeat her actions, in her lifetime she could potentially be linked to the murder of 5 additional children. To me, 6 year imprisonment, doesn't seem just. Tracey Connolley - hypothetically - served 1 year in prison for every 12.5 years that she took of her son's life. I fail to see the atonement in such a 'punishment'.

The Baby P case infuriates me. For one, I find it incomprehensible that someone could actually abuse someone, no less a toddler, in this way. But second, the pure injustice of it all. How could a sentence of 6 years, or even 5 as she should have served, be a deterrent for anyone. Prisons, as I've posted before, are barely a hardship. The guilt of crime doesn't even seem to exist anymore. What with the need for humane ways of treating criminals (which, don't get me wrong, I am not against), punishment doesn't even seem to incorporate its fundamental concept; to punish.

I get particularly passionate about life, and rightly so. You only have one and if it is taken away from you at the bitter age of 2, when the only experience given to you was abuse, then that is not worth having.

Freedom shouldn't be an early release from prison or a return to normality after murder to shop as you would have in ASDA or Tesco. Nor should it be an eternal rest from life on Earth, regardless of religious affiliation. Freedom should be living; simply, unchallenged with no strings attached.