Wednesday, April 20, 2016

The Look Forward: 2016





When I was a kid I used to lie on the floor and 

look up at the ceiling...


I used to pretend that the world was really upside-down. I imagined that the ceiling was actually the floor and instead of furniture and carpet and all these things everywhere we just had the blank space and the lights dangling up from the floor. 


But the practical part of me had to wonder how  this new world would work.  To move from room to room we would have to jump over archways or find some creative way to get up to the second level. 


And would all of our other possessions just stay rooted to the ceiling?





When I was a kid I used to think that people lived underneath the stop lights, 


turning them when needed. 


When my parents were driving and we were sitting at a red light I would wonder 'why aren't they turning the light?'.





When I was in high school I used to walk home


& my favorite days where those when it had just stormed. 

I loved walking home and coming upon a puddle.  

I would take off my shoes and walk right through it barefoot.  

I would walk down the street reveling in the sound of thunder,
the enormity of it, 
the beauty of it, 
the inevitability of it. 

I liked to believe in something so much bigger than myself, than my small limited world.





Sometimes I find myself getting too comfortable. 

I catch myself taking things for granted, forgetting to stop and look around. 

Sometimes I realize that months have gone by since the last time I really stopped to look at life. 

There's something really special about the way that you look at life when you're young and you don't quite understand how things work yet. You give yourself the opportunity to figure out new answers to life's questions. You're able to imagine a new way.  Sometimes I think we lose this when we grow up. We start to do things a certain way because people tell us to do it that way, and it's how it's been done. 







But we don't have to do that. 

We don't have to accept other people's "correct path" as our own. 

We need to remind ourselves to constantly be thinking of paving new roads. 

Or in fact not taking roads at all, rather beating through the brush on our own.




So I look forward to the year ahead, and I have to remember to pave my own paths.   I really want to be able to commit to myself, and carry through on some things that I need to figure out.  I want to remind myself to live in the moment and to take time to appreciate the here and now. 

But I also want to move forward in a more focused and clear way. 

I want to stop thinking of things as things that are going to happen years down the road and start thinking of them as things I need to start making happen now.  If there's a life that I want for myself I need to build brick by brick, I need to stop pretending that it's going to start building itself, or that answers are going to suddenly appear out of thin air.




When people say " it will all work out" it drives me crazy. 

It implies that you can relax; that you don't have to do as much work, and that is a deceptive concept. 

If I'm in distress about something it's for a reason— it's because whatever it is is of some importance and it needs to be addressed.  In my life there's been plenty of situations where people were hustling and stressed to complete a goal. But if there hadn't been that urgency that need to get it done, these great things might not have gotten done at all.  




I want to do great things. 

I want to be confident and proud of the life that I live and the things that I do and the way that I spend my time.  I need to start thinking outside the box and cultivating the creativity that I know I can grow into something wonderful. 

I need to rediscover that thoughtfulness that I once possessed. 



I need to start looking at the world upside down again.


- The Lovely Red Fox

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