When I was diagnosed with diabetes at 14, the message I wanted to hear was that the life I was living right now was good enough, and on Saturday night at the Diabetes NSW "Live your Life" ball I heard it.
I sometimes feel as though society is trying to tell us that unless we win whatever we are doing, we are a failure - unless we get 100% in our high school exams, graduate with honors from university, make the first grade team at our sports club or get that promotion at work, we're not good enough and we've let ourselves down - but after the compliments guests showered on my wife & I after I closed my keynote speech at the Live your Life ball by telling people "there's no rhyme or reason to what happens to us in life; good things happen to bad people & bad things happen to good people, but I hope tonight helps you feel proud of the life you're living RIGHT NOW," I feel reassured that people are proud to be living a "normal" life - they just need to be reminded.
After acknowledging a standing ovation by 2 time Walkley Award winning ABC journalist Andrew Geoghegan, and apologising to former Australian Rugby League fullback Garry Jack for keeping my clothes on during the speech (there IS a story behind that that makes it not weird), CEO of Diabetes NSW, Sturt Eastwood was the first person to come to my table to offer a congratulations - Sturt introduced me to some of the event's corporate sponsors who were touched by my speech and snapped up a business card - I was then pulled away by a former depression sufferer who told me my message was exactly what he wanted to hear - he told me he was proud of his "normal" life, and told me had had the "best wife in the world," but I had to burst his bubble and tell him his wife was the second best! I spoke to friends of former Swans team mates, swapped business cards with CEO's, tried to encourage other diabetics to join my wife & I on Kokoda in October, talked to other diabetics about their impending climb up Everest, their netball careers, and lamented our future BSL readings after the pavlova we had for dessert.
All in all, the best part of the Live your Life ball was the fact that everybody in the room was proudly doing the exact same thing - they were just living their life.
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