When I was 16 I thought I'd marry my first love, have a couple of kids, and kick serious ass as a journalist. Instead I've been married twice, don't know what it's like to be a mother, and sometimes wonder why I went to J-school at all. Despite nothing turning out the way I once thought it would or should have, I hold no real regrets. At the time I'd simply envisioned a life sculpted by the few options I was aware of, laid out like a fresh draw-by-numbers page where all I had to do was go from one point to another, in an ordered sequence, so that I could complete a predetermined whole, a picture someone else had drawn for me.
We all discover eventually that the completed pictures in our heads change as we do, and sometimes because we simply have to roll with the punches. In my case, as it turns out, my life has been one of purpose rather than of planning or design anyway. I wanted love and craved interesting experiences above everything, and so I found both -- again and again. I may not have had the most remarkable life, but at least it was my own.
This same time last year I wrote that I was going to take flight, and that as a result my life would change in spectacular ways and no longer be the same. I was right. So here I am now, starting over, with no clear direction in sight but with only a question to guide me: If I were to die tomorrow, could I say that I had been living a life of passion and purpose, one of meaning?
I would like the answer to be "yes," if even for a short time. See, I believe that this is it -- this is the one life we have to make the most out of. This is where we get to exist in a Heaven or Hell -- right here, one of our own choosing and making.It took me this long to find out just what was truly important and essential, what I could live with and what I could live without, and what could make it all worthwhile. Now I get to take this knowledge -- heck, this wisdom -- and fly again. And keep flying, even when circumstances and situations clip my wings and threaten to leave me grounded, just as they do right now.
I'm starting over, I'm starting with nothing all over again. But I'm free.
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