If you only knew how many blog posts go through my head each day, you’d wonder how I pick only one or two a week to write and publish. The thing is, I don’t pick any of them. The only posts I write are the ones that hit me in the face at the moment I click on the new post button within WordPress. Each time I write a post, an image of my friend Lee pops into my head and the look of her sigh as I say that the first few sentences of each post are still not always what I end up writing about. This is a complete stream of consciousness with rarely any editing and each post should take no longer than 20 minutes to write per 1,000 words. Sorry Lee.
Anyway, let’s move on.
Through my writings and sharing and adventures, there is a small and growing group of young adults who message me from time to time in response to blog posts. I’m going to guess the youth of today are no different than those growing up decades ago. Actually, I won’t isolate this one to youth. I’m going to guess that this is a problem affecting us all.
What is this and how does it end? What path do I choose? What do I do next? How do my choices today affect the future?
Each morning that you are blessed enough with the ability to open your eyes is a chance to seize the clean slate that has been given to you by the universe. You can plan, save, study, learn and ponder what the next day will be like but nothing beats the awesomeness of that first moment when you can really do anything you would like. Sure, there are consequences but it doesn’t mean that anyone will stop you from exploring the space and making this day into anything you’d like.
What is there to figure out? Well, humans have this interesting problem that has plagued much of our thoughts for millions of years and that’s the fundamental requirement to label, name and categorize whatever “this” is. Some call it life and others put an age on it and others list the things you have to complete in life and there’s always someone around that will try to tax “this”. None of that really matters. For “this” isn’t yours or there’s. This is borrowed time and an opportunity to do something cool.
An issue was raised to me by my Mom last year. She said that my sister wasn’t doing great in school despite being a very smart and talented girl. When asked, Cheyenne said, “I’ll never be like Adam. I’ll never travel the world and move out of Florida and get cool jobs and meet cool people and start a company.”
For any of us to say this is the 1st sign of defeat. I had this moment just over a year ago where I spent more of my time comparing my successes to those of my peers and the result was damaging to my future goals. Cheyenne is doing this in comparison to me. It’s worth mentioning that she’ll be turning 14 in July which is about the time that I began spending half of my day blogging after a couple of years of casual notes posted to Livejournal. By comparing herself to me (who is 10 years older), she’s essentially stifling the growth that will eventually happen to her and those opportunities that go along with that growth. Of course, things are less severe now and I include her on my activities and she comes to me with advice on how she can do better in her actions as well. The feelings of wanting to be like her brother haven’t changed but she has seen that today affects tomorrow and has decided to focus on setting the stage for when she’s my age and has her own set of opportunities.
This should be taken one day at a time.
The goal of categorizing “this” has lead to confusion about religion and philosophy. It has forced us to pick political parties and worship the leaders who may or may not have deserved our praises. We’ve gotten behind ideas simply because others were without realizing that we lose our identity in the process. My goal throughout my adult years (all six of them) has been to recognize when I screw up and work to correct it the following day when the universe gives me another clean slate. I study in order to make informed decisions about who I listen to and am always reminding myself to follow my gut and not a man with a book promising salvation. I vow to give back more than I take and support more than I demolish.
…and I hope, on my deathbed that I don’t figure “this” out. Figuring it out is half of the fun and I wanna come back again so I can take another shot at it.