Tag: life

Circumstance Is A Weak Choice

Scenic view or septic tank? Your choice.
Scenic view or septic tank? Your choice.

“I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt

Here is my blanket statement of the day. There are two kinds of people in this world…people who embrace choice and people who don’t. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this differentiation. I know many people who live their lives through the filter of circumstance. Things happen to them. They are firmly locked into the victim mindset, unable to let go of what is now in the past. Life has been unfair to them, and life has made them unhappy. But life is unfair to everyone in one way or another, and this is where choice comes in. When something unwelcome happens to you, you unexpectedly lose your job or your child or your home, for example, that is circumstance. How you deal with circumstance is choice, and that choice is the difference between lifelong happiness or lifelong disappointment.

I’ve cycled through both the victim and the champion role in my life, gratefully remaining more on the champion side as a rule. Sometimes I would sit in suck-i-tude for a while before putting on my big girl panties and making changes. And it’s true that sometimes you need to let yourself be where you are in your disappointment, sadness, and regret. It’s part of the human condition. But I’ve realized that remaining stuck there is a waste of time. Life is too short to hang out too long where grief and sadness reside. I am in charge of writing my story. The people I have most admired have taken what life has handed them and worked it in their favor. It might not have happened overnight, but it happened. It’s a process.

Now that I am better at not relegating my life to well-gee-it-is-what-it-is, I find myself struggling with the appropriate way to act when others are marooned in the quagmire of circumstance. Some people only feel better when they are getting attention and sympathy from others, and the best way for them to do that is to remain lodged and helpless in their unfortunate circumstances. When you are involved with people who rely on you to make their life better, interactions with them are exhausting. How do you show empathy while maintaining self-preservation? It’s a tough line to walk. I’m working on being compassionate while remaining cautiously distant so I don’t get sucked into their vortex of pity-poor-me. That attitude is like the flu and, if your choice mindset is underdeveloped or suffering a setback, you can catch that victim bug more than once. And I have.

I don’t want to feel trapped by anyone’s circumstances, including my own. I want to be creative and find ways to negotiate obstacles as they arise by determining what choices I have in the situation. I know I don’t have to own or be responsible for any choices others make to remain trapped in their situations. Intellectually, I understand that, but I invariably wrestle to free myself of others’ negativity and focus on my own reactions instead. I’m striving to be braver and to recognize the bad for what it is…a chance to grow and adapt. I’m getting there. And, someday I will successfully be able to navigate the landmines that life’s victims leave for me. For now, all I can do is worry about myself and tread lightly in the direction of positivity.

 

 

Posted on by Me 6

Boyhood

Stupid time and its flying
Stupid time and its flying

I watched the Golden Globe Awards last night. I watch them almost every year. I’m not a big Hollywood junkie or anything. I don’t have an investment in who wins the awards. I just watch to find out what shows or movies I might not want to miss. The Golden Globes are how I discovered Breaking Bad, and I have no regrets about the hours I logged watching Walter White. The Golden Globes are research. That is all.

Last night’s big winner was Boyhood, which won in the motion picture category for Best Director, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Drama. I was curious, so today I rented it on iTunes. The director tells the story of a boy growing up, from age 6 to age 18. He did this by filming the actors once a year for 12 years. It’s brilliant, really. As you’re watching the film, you are literally watching the main character grow up before your eyes. I suppose that’s what makes the movie so poignant. As a parent watching my own kids blossom, it was damn near heartbreaking to watch. It’s a beautiful film and an appropriate reminder that time with our kids, no matter how exhausting, frustrating, and downright unpleasant it can be at times, is ephemeral. Damn all the people who have made a point of telling me that life is short. Damn them for being right.

Toward the end of the film, the mom is realizing that her nest is about to be emptied. She has a small meltdown and says, “I just thought there would be more.” More. She recognizes that she’s reached the milestones of her adult life. Getting married. Having kids. Getting divorced. Finally getting her degree and her dream job. Watching her kids go off to college. The big stuff is over, and now all she can think is that the next phase of her life ends in her own funeral. We’re raised to focus on milestones. It’s all about reaching the next phase. We’re forever rushing forward until we reach the time when we feel we’ve gone too far too quickly. We just want to go back, but by then it’s too late.

I’ve been working to appreciate each moment as its own, knowing that this is all there is. I’m getting better at being present in my life. I know I must be because sometimes now I look at my boys and get weepy. In a good way. They’re so handsome and precious with their unique personalities and their whole lives ahead of them. The emotions I used to run from bubble over these days, spilling into everything I do. There are more hugs in my life now. More deep breaths. More moments of gratitude. When I hear that clock ticking, I make a conscious effort to slow it down by focusing on now. I know we’re all screwed up. I’m not alone in my insanity. It’s only recently that I’ve acknowledged that I’m one of the lucky ones. I get it.

Posted on by Me 7

And Then Life Happens

What will you leave behind?
What will you leave behind?

It has been a lachrymose few days for me. And while I’m rarely teary-eyed for long, sometimes my thinking brain gets trampled unexpectedly by my feeling heart and leaves me a bit off kilter. Life’s challenges can explode like forgotten landmines lying in wait, and recently I’ve been privy to more bad news than good. The shock of the unexpected and the gravity of life’s free fall moments got the best of me last week. I’ve been clawing my way from my heart back to my head for days hoping to gain some traction in the present.

Late last week, I learned via Facebook that a former high school classmate of mine died. It’s not easy when anyone dies. It’s more difficult when the person who passed is your age because, well….Hello, Mortality. Beyond that, I hate learning about death through social media. It’s such an unwelcome, impersonal shock filled with unanswerable questions. I can’t say that I knew this person well. He was among the best students in our class, so I was on the outskirts of his life in AP Physics and Calculus. He was someone I knew from the hallways, the yearbook pages, and the sharing of mutual friends. As the news of his passing spread across my Facebook friends’ news feeds and the online memorial tributes to him increased in number, I grieved along with my friends through some sort of osmotic process. The few interactions that John and I shared happened in the more recent past. I knew more about him through Facebook than I knew of him in the real world, so I suppose it was fitting that I learned about his moving on through the same channel. I can’t say that I had an impact on his life in any way, but I know that his life touched mine in the kind of way that makes you realize that we citizens of Earth have more in common than we think we do based on what we see on the outside.

Today as I was driving home after dropping the boys off at school, still absorbed by life’s absurdities and ill-timed departures, I was following a snow-covered van. We traveled along at 55 miles per hour and the snow from the van’s roof blew off in swirls. As the individual flakes whizzed toward my car, it appeared I was making the leap to hyperspace. In the early morning sunlight, each flake was a tiny fleck of gold or silver. I got caught up in the beauty of this pure and simple occurrence. It made me deeply and honestly happy. I felt better than I have in days. It wasn’t a winning lottery ticket that brought me out of my funk. It was a moment of gratitude for life brought about by a random act of beauty I was finally present enough to appreciate.

I can’t stop thinking now about how wrong we humans are about our journey on this planet. We make life into what appears on the outside. We obsess with how we look rather than focusing on who we are personally and what truly matters to us. We stress about where our kids go to school more than we worry about our relationships with them. We want the respect of others, and we think we will earn it with important job titles, tastefully decorated homes, and luxury cars. We are cats jumping at shiny things. We are clueless.

The effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is. Everything you gain in life will rot and fall apart, and all that will be left of you is what was in your heart. ~Jim Carrey

This quote has been bouncing around in my head for weeks. I’ve been wanting to say something about it, and several times I’ve sat down with my laptop to try to coax the words out of my mind. They wouldn’t come. Then our class lost John and it came into focus. All the epitaphs, composed for a friend who left us too soon, collected the whole of John’s heart and put it on display for all of us who regret that we did not know him better. Short though his life was, it was a life lived right.

We who are still here are lucky enough to have this moment. Don’t squander it. Look around you. Be grateful for what you have. Pay attention to those who matter. Don’t bother chasing the shiny distractions. Time is precious. Someday someone will be painting a verbal picture of you posthumously. Make sure you show them your best side now.

Posted on by Me 4

I Stay Home…Get Over It

I have the best job ever.
This is my career. How could it be worthless?

Ever since I made the choice to leave my career and stay home with my sons, I’ve been overwhelmed by my choice. There have been periods of time when I felt like I was nothing more than a butt wiper or a housekeeper or, in darkest times, a slave. Some days it is hard to find the silver lining in my current career. But, no fail, right about the time that I am feeling 100% certain about my decision, some working woman or man asks me what I do. The standard response I get when I tell a career person that I am a stay-at-home mom is a simple, one syllable, “Oh.” Conversation over. Clearly, I have no longer have anything current or intelligent to talk about, and no one wants to hear about kids, so they leave. I am a serial conversation killer. I’m not exactly sure when the decision to expend my energy solely as mother and homemaker vaporized my IQ and decimated my inherent worth as a human being, but it happened. Working people get to ask me ridiculous questions about my personal choice without feeling an iota of impropriety. I wonder how they would feel about it if I questioned the validity of their career choice? Really? You’re a programmer? I’ve heard they’ve taught monkeys to do that.

I was fortunate enough to have a choice to make when I was 32: 1) have a career and no kids, 2) have a career and kids, or 3) have kids and no career. I chose what was behind Door Number Three. When Joe was born, I knew that what I really wanted was as low-stress of a life as I could have. To me, that meant not trying to juggle too many things. Steve worked. We could afford for me not to work. We came to an agreement. He puts money in our bank account. I run the house. We share duties with our sons. Our weekends are free to enjoy because I take care of the busy work during the week. As with any choice, it has both good and bad points. The choice I made means I clean toilets and mop floors like Cinderella because we can’t afford a maid. It also means, however, I can go to yoga during the day when my kids are in school because I am my own boss. Like anyone else’s life, my life is a balancing act to keep things working. But, make no mistake about it, I work. Every day. Seven days a week. I get no paid vacation. No bonuses. No salary. But it’s worth it to me because our four lives are more peaceful because of what I do.

To be fair, I know that the work I do is invisible to those on the outside (unless they catch me at Starbucks having coffee with a friend while they’re on their way to work and suddenly I’m no longer invisible). And this is why people feel free to interpret something they know nothing about. Still, I get tired of answering condescending questions. To that end, today I invented some succinct responses to lessen the agony of being asked them repeatedly:

“When do you think you’ll go back to work?” Never. Work sucks.

“What did you do when you worked?” I was an adult film star.

“What do you do with all your free time when the kids are in school?” Day drink.

“Don’t you get bored?” Oh…when I get bored watching Oprah, I take a nap. Crisis averted.

Really, people. I am doing the right thing for me. I only get one shot with my boys. I have to do my best the first time around because it’s the only time I have. Ask any adult child about their relationship with their parents and you will know this is true. Time with our children goes by fast. I have six years left with my beautiful, deep-thinking, first-born son. It will be over in the blink of an eye. I know I have been fortunate to have a choice, and I know that what is right for me is not necessarily right for others. I don’t begrudge anyone their choice. I simply wish others would believe that there’s more to me than my lack of a paycheck. Right now, I’m somebody’s most important person, and that won’t always be the case. Someday they will no longer need me. I bet I will not be on my death-bed regretting the inordinate amount of time I spent with my sons in their youth. I will only regret acknowledging stupid questions about the smartest choice I ever made.

Posted on by Me 11

What Difference Does It Make

Something British that I truly enjoyed last night
Something British that I truly enjoyed last night

“One must hop toward the light rather than sit in a shadow and wonder why it’s dark.” ~Bunny Buddhism

I’ve been a regular concert goer since I was a teenager. I saw my first concert (The Police on their Synchronicity tour) when I was 15 years old. My friends and I were in the rafters in seats labeled on the printed tickets as “Possible Obstructed View.” It didn’t matter. When Sting took the stage and I saw the tiny dot that was HIM, the magical concept of the concert was solidified. I was taken in hand by the spirit of live music. Game over.

Last night I had the opportunity to see in concert an artist I’ve followed since I wore black on the outside because black was how I felt on the inside. As much as I adored Sting and The Police (and I’ve seen Sting, either with or without The Police, approximately nine times), The Smiths were my anchor, Morrissey my preacher. Need a pithy lyric? I’ve got an entire cache of Smiths’ lyrics stored in my brain, the same brain that can’t remember my own phone number some days. After two failed attempts to see the Moz (he cancelled the shows both times), yesterday afternoon I started to believe it might be my night. I crossed my fingers and hoped the third time was a charm. Please, please, please let me get what I want. Lord knows, it would be the first time. To celebrate the evening’s potential, my friend Heather and I had dinner at the British Bulldog. We were taking this experience as seriously as Morrissey takes his PETA affiliation.

When he finally took the stage last night in the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, all the self-inflicted misery of my teenage years resurfaced. The show started out better than I could have hoped with Hand in Glove. His voice was spot on, clear, smooth, and without any hint of the ill effects of high altitude. Having resigned myself long ago to the knowledge that I would never hear a Smiths’ song live, I could not have been more happy to be wrong. As the concert progressed, however, I found myself becoming increasingly agitated. A steady dose of morose songs are the norm with Morrissey, but his solo catalog also includes musically upbeat tunes…even if they are accompanied by lyrics that are she-was-found-face-down-in-a-bathtub-of-vodka level of depressing. I kept waiting for the uptempo songs. They did not arrive. Worse than that, I was seated next to an aggravating couple that included a gentleman who believed he himself was Morrissey. He sang each and every word quite loudly and with the utmost conviction of his own vocal talent. I wanted to kick him in the eye. I was not surprised when Morrissey performed Meat Is Murder while onscreen a graphic, five-minute long film of the industrialized food machine abusing and murdering animals played for our edification. I gave up hope and focused instead on my double vodka and soda. At least there was a chance for temporary mental respite at the bottom of my plastic cup. I checked my phone for the time and found myself disappointed that it was only 10:11. All I could think was heaven knows I’m miserable now.

Toward the end of the show, Heather and I checked out. I think we might have left if it hadn’t been for some sort of misguided optimism that perhaps Morrissey would come out of his self-indulgent drama long enough to play something lively and redeem the show. I know Morrissey was simply being Morrissey. It’s not his fault that I didn’t get the concert I had hoped for. He was the same Morrissey he has always been. I have changed. My mentality has caught up with my biology. I’m older now and have less tolerance for intentional misery. I am weary and wary of wallowing for wallowing’s sake. Life is short, and our thoughts determine our relative level of joy. Based on that notion, Morrissey must be the most disconsolate man on earth. Don’t get me wrong. I will always enjoy his songs because they are wry, poetic, and clever. He rests on the other side of the scale from brainless, pop fluff and creates a necessary balance. Somewhere along the line, though, I decided that choosing to live in misery doesn’t make you deep. It just makes you dark. I will never see another one of your shows, Morrissey, but I’m still fond of you.

Posted on by Me 0

Baby Bunny Hops

Don't let the clouds fool you
Don’t let the clouds fool you

I am supposed to be training for our Inca Trail hike in July, but this week the spring weather has been wholly uncooperative. Monday and Tuesday were very windy, which left me indoors to practice yoga and put time in on the spin bike. I considered that better than nothing, although it was not what I was hoping for. This morning, though, I looked out and noticed it was sunny and fairly calm. I thought the weather might be handing me a small break. I would take it.

By the time I had dropped the boys at school, loaded my pack and the dog in the car, and made my way to the trailhead parking lot, I began rethinking my decision. The skies were darkening, and the car thermometer registered all of 50 degrees. While pulling my pack from the trunk, I noticed the winds were picking up. I hate wind. I reached for my GPS-enabled sports watch only to discover it was low on battery. Of course. I would not be tracking today’s workout. I had also forgotten my headphones. Seriously? It was starting to feel like I should just turn around and find a warm yoga studio instead.

I decided to soldier on and in the end I was glad I did. While the weather wasn’t perfect, it was a great day to be on the trail. It was mostly empty and I was able to enjoy my own private hike. Without my headphones, I was privy to every little sound. Movement in the underbrush uncovered a couple spotted towhees hopping through the crumbling leaves. Bees and hummingbirds whizzed by my head. The wind whistled heavily in several spots and yet I noticed other areas the wind completely missed. Several times along the way I confronted memories of my sons, paused with their backs to me, still as stone fountain boys peeing into the wind. It was a solitary, contemplative hike filled with sensory experiences. I was 100% in the present for an hour outdoors, and it was lovely.

On the way down, I thought about how easy it would have been to look at all the negatives gathering on the balance sheet before the hike and scrap it all together. I thought about this Bunny Buddhism quote:

I would rather hop and see what happens than sit and worry about what might go wrong.

Too often we imagine scenarios that keep us from doing something we could easily accomplish. We find reasons not to do something we determine might be unpleasant. We don’t give ourselves a chance to face the situation and see how it plays out. I’ve been ruminating on this thought lately. We have a choice. We can either make excuses or we can make progress. Sadly, it’s easier to make excuses than it is to risk vulnerability. And this is where we get stuck. It’s easy to let the clouds fool you into expecting rain when none is coming.

I put myself out there today in a small way, and it paid off. Now if I could just convince my inner self to be brave enough to make progress on my book idea, then I’d really be getting somewhere. Baby bunny hops, I guess.

 

 

 

Posted on by Me 0

Whatever Twitches, Twitches

I found my own cable on a beach that led into the jungle and into the ocean.
I found my own cable on a beach…one end leading into the jungle and one end leading into the ocean. Scary how life imitates art.

A couple minutes ago I watched the credits roll on the final episode of LOST. I spent the past four weeks cruising through the series. It’s not that I missed the show during its original run. I watched it when it was on the air weekly. I was one of those LOST geeks, looking for “Easter eggs” and spending hours each week mentally dissecting the episodes. As an introvert who spends entirely too much time inside her own head working out mental details, that show was a perfect outlet for me at a time in my life when I was lost. It was easier to watch and find meaning in it than it was to make sense of the chaos, confusion, and struggles in my own life. LOST was an escape. During the years that show aired, there were plenty of times when I longed to be on a tropical island with Sawyer, although I might have envisioned one without smoke monsters and polar bears.

I remember as the show was in its final season, my friends and I discussed at great length how the writers were going to wrap it all up. There were so many details. They had tortured us mercilessly with unanswered questions each week. Would they be able to put all the puzzle pieces in place? After each episode in the final season, we would catalog explanations we’d received and bicker about whether they felt adequate and well placed. When the show ended and the final credits rolled, some LOST devotees were satisfied and others were, well….lost. I fell firmly into the first category. I was honestly happy that the writers left some pieces unexplained because that meant that I could watch the show over and over again and find my own meaning. There’s no fun if you’re given all the answers.

As I set out to view the series in its entirety this time, from the first episode of the first season all the way through the show’s finale, I suspected the show would make any more sense to me now than it did at the time. I would benefit from knowing the ending because that knowledge would change how I viewed the events leading up to it. I had my own theory about the characters and the story line, and I was going to test it out in my non-stop mind. I whipped my way through season after season desperately seeking whether the writers had hinted at the ending the whole time. Watching the show again was like having a conversation with a good friend you haven’t seen in years. It was as if no time had passed. And I discovered that the Season Three finale, Through the Looking Glass, was no less painful the second time around. I had a nice ugly cry over it again. I am not sure that wound will ever heal.

The closer I got to the end of the show this time around, though, the more I found myself letting go of the set up. I didn’t seem to care as much if my hypothesis was correct. By the point in Season 5 when Daniel Farraday says, “Whatever happened, happened,” I had let go of my obsessive need to figure the show out. Daniel was right. Truth is that it doesn’t really matter how it all happened. You can neatly fold back the layers like skin on a junior-high-biology-class frog, but it makes no difference. At the end of the day, all that matters is that it happened. Daniel’s insight reminded me of a quote from the Bunny Buddhism book:

One need not know why the nose twitches but simply know that it twitches.

You can spend your entire life looking for explanations as to why things have happened a certain way in your life. Why, perhaps, you ended up with the spouse you did or the career you have. How you ended up living somewhere you said you never would or how things have worked out nothing like you anticipated. Life is full of questions that are either unanswerable or answerable only with a huge degree of uncertainty about the validity of the answer. Mentally dissecting what is is merely a colossal waste of fleeting time. If we get bogged down with the details of our past, we can’t move forward in the present. It doesn’t matter how we get there but that we make the journey and make it worthwhile.

I don’t need to know all the answers to LOST to enjoy it. I don’t need to have it tied neatly in a bow. Likewise, I don’t need to have all the answers to be happy in my life. Whatever happened, happened. Whatever twitches, twitches. With each passing year it becomes more apparent to me that the why and how of life are not nearly as important as the that.

 

Posted on by Me 2

The Life I Never Meant To Live

This is what it's all about.
This is what it’s all about.

At a loss as to what to write about this evening, I decided to let chance select my topic. I flipped to a random tab in my Bunny Buddhism book and selected the first quote I saw.

The wise bunny accepts life for what it is, not for what it is expected to be.

Man…I so could have used this quote about eight years ago when I was lost and questioning how I had gotten so far off track. Off track of what? Well, at that time in my life, I actually believed there was a track I was supposed to be on. That track had involved having a great career and earning enough money to have someone reliable and decent care for my children and clean my home. That was my plan to have it all. I smile at that thought now. It really didn’t seem like such an unrealistic expectation for myself. I’m smart, well-educated, and have been successful in every paying job I’ve ever had. No reason why that shouldn’t have panned out for me. No reason except that it wasn’t my path. My path involved two darling little boys who needed some extra help, help I felt only I could give them. So I quit my job to stay home with them and everything changed. I changed. Being a stay-at-home parent was far more difficult than I imagined it would be. For a few years, I felt trapped, disillusioned, and resentful. I was an unhappy bunny.

Slowly and with time I learned that my path has been uniquely mine and completely perfect, despite my original objections. I managed to release my earlier expectations for my life and to make peace with what is. Honestly I’ve more than made peace with my present. I’m grateful that things worked out the way they did. As difficult as it was at times to be with my boys day in and day out, to give up my financial independence and earning potential, it was absolutely, 100% the best thing for our family. Because of this revised path, I have learned so much about myself, my sons, and life. I’ve had time for self-expression and freedom to explore new things. I feel fortunate to have had this time to grow.

I’d like to say that I no longer have any expectations, but that is not entirely true. Old habits die hard. But I am a much wiser bunny now. I know that what I think is the best thing and what actually is the best thing may not be the same thing. I’m more flexible and open to letting things unfold without my having a stranglehold on the itinerary. In yoga class, the instructors often ask us to soften into a pose rather than force our way into it. I’ve found that analogy works in my life too. And life is much better as a soft, fluffy bunny.

Posted on by Me 0

Crushing The Hulk

Mental peace = sunrise on Kauai
Mental peace = sunrise on Kauai

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately engaged in what has become a regular pastime of mine…pondering the unanswerable questions of life. Rather than being consumed by the everyday worries provided 24/7 via the cable news networks, I exercise my brain by contemplating topics like the potential for achieving emotional peace whilst circumnavigating the vast ocean of fluid interpersonal relationships. Is there a meaning of life? Is there a Hell? Are humans doomed to repeat their mistakes? Will there ever be another television program as brilliant as Breaking Bad? (Okay. Maybe not that last one, but it does deserve an answer.) While some friends find my need for intellectual exercise exhausting, as an introvert I rather enjoy my armchair philosophy. There’s something comforting in asking questions that cannot be answered. At least you’re certain your suppositions can’t be proven wrong.

Yesterday while my mind was entrenched in the question of whether a person can have true compassion for a friend without taking on any emotional burden of said friend, Joe came racing in from the cold to interrupt my mental machinations. He’d been outside sledding and wanted to share something with his brother who had been resigned to inside play after I’d discovered that his second-hand snow boots were falling apart (literally, the heel of the boot was flapping when he walked and he’d failed to mention this little tidbit to me for a week).

“Luke, you’ve got to come outside and sled!” he implored.

“I can’t, Joe,” came the disappointed reply. “My boots are broken and the insides are all wet. It’s too cold.”

“Okay. But we’re out there running over the Hulk with our sleds. We’re trying to destroy him,” Joe explained before beating a hasty retreat back to the sledding hill lest he miss any additional opportunities for destruction. Poor, plastic Hulk. He didn’t stand a chance against four preteen boys hell-bent on mowing him down in freezing temps.

Luke sat quietly for a minute or two and then he ran upstairs. He reappeared shortly wearing long underwear, fresh wool socks, and a hat with ear flaps. He ran to grab his snow pants. When he came back in, he began his verbal campaign as he continued dressing.

“I have to go back out, Mom. I don’t care if my feet get cold. They’re sledding…over the Hulk. How often do you even get that opportunity? It’s epic!”

I didn’t see how I could argue with this logic. He was right. You don’t get many opportunities to team up to destroy the Hulk, even if he is just a small, plastic shell of the big, green guy. Philosopher though I am, I understand the occasional sense of urgency to let go of the mantle of deep thought, logic, and rational behavior to seize an epic opportunity, warm feet be damned. Yes. My mind may be old and grown up, perpetually stymied by life’s deeper questions, but I’m still young enough to appreciate that sometimes you have to throw caution to the wind and crush the Hulk.

No matter what the bigger answers are, every day my children remind me what it truly means to live.

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You Just Never Know

Our jar filled with things we did in 2013 that made the year memorable.
Our jar filled with paper reminders about all we did in 2013 that made the year memorable.

My friend, Rachel, posted this to Facebook earlier today, and it’s been tumbling through my mind like socks in a dryer all afternoon.

People like to use New Year’s Day as a “clean slate” or a “new beginning” but in reality every second of every day is a new lifetime, one you have never lived before, so if you are ready to make a change do it. You are the master of your fate. Use every new moment to be who and what you want to be.

Boom! There it is. What an amazing revelation. Every minute we’re given an opportunity to start fresh. The past is behind us. Our future becomes reality one minute at a time as the present begins anew. There’s no need to wait for New Year’s Day to begin a resolution. You never know what’s coming up next. We fool ourselves into believing there’s always tomorrow. But, sometimes there isn’t. The time to go, to do, to forgive, to trust, to try, to adventure, to reinvent, and to begin is now. No matter how bad things seem, you can make an improvement if you really want to.

Yesterday I spent time with a friend I haven’t seen in a couple of months. I mentioned that hubby and I are planning a trip to Peru next year. It’s a trip we’ve talked for twenty years about taking but have found somewhat legitimate excuses to put off. We recently pulled the trigger and booked the trip, rational thought be damned. As I relayed my concerns about leaving our boys for 12 days of international, out-of-touch travel and adding way too much debt to our credit card at one time, my friend implored me not to delay any longer. She understands that there’s no better time than the present. Her husband is 48 and is suffering from progressive MS with an emphasis on progressive. In six years he’s lost the ability to complete simple daily tasks most of us take for granted. His body is betraying him and his sons and his wife provide support so he can get dressed, get in and out of bed, and function as best as he can each day. As she has witnessed her husband’s decline, she’s learned a lot about life. Life is too short to wait for anything. The time will never be right. There will always be things that stand in our way. But, honestly, sometimes there is no better time. Sometimes there is not even a tomorrow. And we may not know that until it’s too late to do something about it.

Tonight at dinner we sat down and went through a jar we’ve been keeping since January 1st, 2013. We filled the jar all year long with paper reminders of all the memorable things 2013 brought us. As a family we recalled camping trips, personal accomplishments, and cool adventures. We relived our year, and it was pretty great. Universe-willing, 2014 will be amazing too. Steve and I will be hiking the Inca Trail in July. And in the meantime, we’re going to continue to hug our kids and tell them we love them every day. We’re going to wake up and be grateful for what is good rather than lament about what is not the way we had hoped. Some days we’re going to do crazy things, like splashing into 37-degree water on a brisk New Year’s Day, just because we can. I’m going to take deep breaths, revel in joyful little things, and accept last-minute invitations. I’m going to let the laundry pile grow while I go for long walks. I’m going to welcome new friends into my life and linger over the last sip of wine in my glass with old ones. I’m going to be more bold, practice being at peace, and enjoy my precious time on this planet because you just never know. And if a year from now I’m still fortunate enough to be on this crazy ride, I’m going to sit with my family again and add up the gifts I was willing to reach for, one minute at a time.

 

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