The more adventures Ive opened myself up to in my life, the more aware I am of how profoundly our lives are beyond our control. I think you can maintain the illusion of control when you stay home, but when you change geographic location for even a short time, you begin to notice more easily the many events, and moments that irrevocably alter the course of your life. There seems to be a relentless series of chapters that define the shape of your dreams. You see the familiar with fresh eyes each time you leave and return. I think when you travel often you become more aware of how many brief and finite chapters make up a life. More and more I get the sense, that no matter how much we screw up our lives along the way, no matter what personal choices or willpower or bad advice we employ for either good or ill...everything we do leads us inevitably toward the one big thing we long to do, as we stumble through all the little things were meant to do in our time on this planet. But we still have free will, its just used in choosing the how and when we get to live life on the way to where we will eventually end up. Every well-written script pushes its leading character in a completely new direction every 5 pages (anywhere but where you THINK you want to go...which is wherever looks easier, no matter how dissatisfied youd be when you got there) . Each plot point is passed only once, and the point, once passed is a story to be told later, but a place to which your heart will never truly return. A good writer knows where her characters are headed, but its always the character on the page that seems to defines how he or she will get there. All that character on the page knows (and fights like hell to avoid) is that each time that 5th page turns more open road lays ahead. Getting on a plane makes the page turns more obvious. You pack a few things that matter to you and go into the blue. When you return to the same place and the things that matter mean something different to you. Every single time. On each deployment Ive felt that tightness in my chest a moment or two before takeoff, knowing that I loved the life I had and that when I returned I would be different and my life would change accordingly. Each time the change in direction has been more profound than I could have imagined. This is true even for a short trip away from your comfort zone, though its usually the big ones that arouse our fear and apprehension. Life is packing that bag in a rush, hoping youre prepared for what you expect is ahead. and then embracing the journey (however reluctantly) when it, inevitably, is not what you expected it would be. But heres the thing. If you turn that 5th page on your own often enough, instead of waiting for life to force you to do it against your will ... you will find that instead wrestling with fear of the unknown, you begin to crave the braver, stronger more competent version of you that waits around the next bend you DECIDED to walk to instead. What you fear lies in the woods along the road is not nearly as frightening as a life lived without the discoveries that inevitably lie beyond the next bend. But what defines Hell, if no choice we makes can eliminate our role in a larger plot? I wonder somedays if it it regret. Regret if we hesitated, or avoided a stumble or zig zag down an unknown road because we were too afraid of the twists and turns that would take us on the shortest possible route to where the life we long for most is waiting. In short, a poorly edited script. Heres to getting way the heck out in the tall weeds sooner rather than later. Its so much more fun to look back on your life and see a trail so far behind you in the weeds that it disappears into a sunset beyond a forgotten horizon. The tall weeds are where the stuff of life is are yours for the taking, once you stop wasting it all on trying to avoid the suck. ; ) #KeepCalmAndKittehOn
Posted on: Wed, 03 Dec 2014 06:01:31 +0000
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