When we craft our lives, the majority of time we bank to the right or left depending upon the circumstances. Sometimes we move forward into a place that was meant to be and other times we fall backwards to a place, upon reflection, was the wrong move.
Regardless of our movement, or our direction, the one thing that is constant in our life is change. New places, new friends, unforseen circumstances, the vicissitudes of life. Each development strenghtens our resolve to learn and grow, or weakens it.
As each state of affairs presents new challenges, our mindset to adapt and conquer produces an avenue for change. The road contains warnings or clues that we sometimes miss. The people we trust to help us or the job or place we fall in love with is sometimes at odds with our gut feeling. Our gut feeling guards us from potential bad choices or enhances our belief that we made the right choice.
In many cases the road is worn with the foot prints of others to help us gauge our own direction. This direction can provide us with a new level of excitement invigorating our inner self to the possibility of even greater happiness. I beleive we are at our best when we are stimulated by the challange of change. However, driven by emotion rather than intellect can be a recipe for disaster. This leads to my next expression.
Learning from our mistakes is often the best way to align providence for the not to distant time ahead. Mistakes are the cornerstone of wisdom. This wisdom can only be realized if we never look to the past to make excuses for the future.
Your body doesn’t live in the past… why should your mind? I hear so often people grouse about the mistakes of the past as they continue to make the same mistakes moving on. This most certainly is an excercise in futility. The ship has sailed on that event and it’s time to cast that anchor of pitty and regret aside. It’s time to read up-lifting books and surround ourselves with positive people that bring out the joy and hope in us.
“The Road Not Taken”
Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence;
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the diference.
It is with that sentiment I gaze upon those I call friends and family. One is by design, the other by blood. Both carry the enormous joy of experiences that have led to those two definitions. Because of change and the alluring sense of discovery our inner strenght is sometimes the proclivity to be drawn to that which we know.
However, the best surprises lie in the packages we unwrap. In many cases these places, people, or events reveal a view into the looking glass of our soul. This can unmask our true and unwavering view of life, a reflection into the beauty that only we will truly know as the sand in the hour glass of time has run its course.
The way that we envision our future is a direct correlation between our beliefs, our experiences, and the certainty in which we execute our path. Obstacles are part of life and if we have enough of them and we overcome them… towards the final chapter, we will be in control of our destiny.
Isn’t that the recipe for a happy and fullfilled life? Living life on our terms with the knowledge that we’ve hurdled over doubt and trepidation that has led to a wonderful enriched belief in ourselves. If its too tough for you… its just right for me.