41 trips.

Our concept of time is very interesting. We want time to speed up when our children are little so that we can hear their first words and see their first steps. We want time to slow down when they reach High School and we reminisce about the younger years. We slow it down when we are in the middle of an awe inspiring moment because we want it etched in our memory banks for all of time. We fast forward when life throws us curve balls and we long for moments of stillness so that we can revel in the smooth terrain of life. Time is the most certain of dimensions. It’s going to happen. It passes at the same speed for every single human being. If we’re lucky, we figure out in our lifetime how to seize the moments we exist within and appreciate the heck out of them. Because they happened and they are a part of your story and that’s a pretty remarkable book to hang on to.

I tend to get a little more sentimental on the eve before my birthday. My mind turns into a camera reel and it just plays every single clip from the past year. This particular one was tough. The strength of my family was put to the test and we were tired and worn down. Vagueness is my specialty, and in this particular instance, I will follow suit. Situations happen in life and while we would like to think they could have been controlled, they just can’t be. We can waste our time wondering why things happened the way they did or we can utilize that energy in a more productive manner and see to it that justice is served. And it was served well. Moving on.

With each year that passes, I understand much more clearly the magnitude of being a kind human being. We live in a world which tends to feel pretty heavy with tragedies and terrorist acts and killing sprees and fighting and racial inequality and small mindedness when it comes to someone’s sexual orientation. The before mentioned acts are inconceivable to me and gosh, I am ever so thankful to be surrounded by some beautiful humans who shake their fists at the same absurdities that I do. In the midst of such impenetrable obscurity I have learned to smile more. I smile at the waiter helping me at the restaurant. I smile at the person who stopped to let me pass him in line at the grocery store. I smile at the UPS delivery guy as he drops off packages. I smile at the homeless woman who sits at the bus stop with all of her belongings to the left of her. We walk around in life sometimes with blinders on. If that person in front of us looks slightly different than we do, we think that they are wrong. Y’all, it’s time that we remind ourselves that we are not the standard. You may have a shiny new car and fancy house with the white picket fence and the coveted job, yet you just might be missing out on a whole lot more. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I run across folks who live outside or in their car and they look a whole heck of a lot happier than the person stuck in their car during rush hour in their power suit. Honestly. Study them sometimes. I think it’s in their eyes. The way that they smile. I have come to realize that life feels really good when you appreciate one another and encourage every single human to live as freely as they possibly can. I mean, that’s the same respect I wish for in return. So let’s do it.

I’m reminding myself a lot more these days to be more gentle on this self of mine. If I speak about myself negatively, I am essentially inviting others to do the same. I am not perfect in any sense of the word. I struggle with insecurities and self doubt and acceptance and it’s sometimes a daily struggle to steer my thoughts in a different direction. Sometimes I feel like I reinvent myself every day. I am constantly reminded of the Alice in Wonderland quote “It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” I feel like we change as time passes. I happen to be quite in tune with my thoughts and my energy so I understand when I feel out of sorts. I used to apologize incessantly for those mood changes, yet now I have come to realize….that’s who I am. Sometimes I am needy and sometimes I crave aloneness and oftentimes I want to hear a steady stream of banter and other times I want to leave that party just as soon as I got there because of the nonsensical chatter all around me. I crave intimacy and compliments and I want to be heard and sometimes I don’t listen well enough. I am a constant work in progress and I am thankful for all of the jagged little pieces that make up the compilation of me. I wish this realization upon every single human in my life. It’s better to just outright love yourself and if you feel like you never really have, there’s no time like the present.

Forty one trips around the sun have proven to be quite the adventure for me. If there is one thing I know with certainty, is that life moves. It’s ever changing. If we spend our seconds upon minutes upon hours contemplating and second guessing and over analyzing, we sort of miss out on the greatness of unplanned moments. Here’s to another trip around the sun. “Happiness, not in another place, but this place, not for another hour, but this hour” ~ Walt Whitman.