FIVE OHHHHHH….
People celebrate milestones, anniversaries and golden birthdays. This year is the year of my THIRTY-TWENTY. A half century on this planet and I still don’t know anything. When I was a kid, I thought my dad knew EVERYTHING there was to know. He had all the answers to any problem, and I was fully convinced that he knew how to fix any problem. I can remember being so offended when my grandparents would visit on a Saturday and my Grandma would inspect our garden just to tell my dad how he should have done it. The plants were too close, the plants were too far apart, they weren’t getting enough water…it made me mad for him that they constantly told him how to do it, when he didn’t need their help!
As I have gotten older, I’ve always correlated where I am in life to where he was at the same point in his. It wasn’t until I hit about Thirty-Twelve that I had a horrible epiphany – my dad probably didn’t really know anything, either. He was figuring it out and doing the best he could, hoping he made the right choices, just like I am. What a profound moment that was. I realized how complex life is and that everyone is just doing the best they can because there is no playbook. No one was born with all the answers or has a set of instructions tattooed on their arm (except my friend Shad). That moment really went a long way in allowing me to give myself a break and attempt to just go with the flow a lesson I still have to repeat to my control freaky self quite frequently.
This year has been a year of rollercoaster emotions and significant changes…I have been walking down an uncharted and, at times, very scary path – one step at a time, trusting for the right outcome. We really don’t have complete control over our trajectory, we just attempt to steer ourselves in the direction we think is best at the time. All we can really do when life throws an unfair and unexpected curveball (or sucker punch) is take it one day at a time. Breathe in, breathe out. Some days, it takes courage just to get out of bed and put our feet on the floor. Then, when we can find the strength in our legs to stand, all we can do is put one foot in front of the other. In the words of a wise cartoon fish, “Just. Keep. Swimming.”
