If you wonder why most every day I write here’s a reason. This morning at 4:34, before my alarm went off at 4:37, I put my feet on the floor and got up. I wasn’t to the end of the bed when the first thought hit me. “I wonder what people would want to be if they could be anything they aren’t currently?” By the time I’d let the dogs out of their crate I considered elaborating on an idea I thought about a post I started yesterday about people who are type A organized being as stressed or more than people like me who aren’t and who are stressed by the chaos they create. Then I turned on the coffee. This was the first :27 of my day. This is every day.
I’ll say that I write to get things out of my head but the reality is once the first idea is out, another idea slides right in behind. Like the sand in an hourglass they pour down until I go to bed at night and the last grain falls through. One after another. To get them out means to never stop. It can be exciting but it’s also exhausting. Explaining it all to people all the time is hard, so a lot of times I’m just quiet. Really fucking quiet. I like bedtime. It’s slower.
I read an article this year that some people don’t have a constant monologue going in their brain and that they can’t even imagine what it’s like. This is alarming to both those that do and don’t. How could this be? I don’t find it jarring as much as i am too busy listening to my inner monologue. Shhhh. I’m talking in here. No wonder people go crazy.
So back to this morning. I wondered what people would be if they could be anything they wanted. Immediately I was struck that there are a few of my kids friends who may read this and that to them this question is about unlimited opportunity, most everything they want to be is possible or they can at the least consider it. Every decade going up has a different perspective on this question because they must consider it against the limits of “time left”, what they already are, and how long achieving “being” that other thing would take. When I was a kid I wanted to be an eye surgeon. To do that now would take me until I was almost 60 IF I could even get into med school. Maybe that shady Puerto Rican one I heard about in the 80-90’s is still open. Hospitals would for sure hire 60 year old surgery rookies, right?
This topic hit me yesterday from a different angle and it was this. “Do you even know the right questions to ask yourself to be a ssuccessful as you wanted to be at this moment?” This wasn’t just directed inwardly. It was a thought for the collective everyone. It’s one thing to want something different than what you have now. It’s another to think of an aspirational “other optimum”. Then there’s a path to that optimum life and finally there’s the questions we need to ask ourselves to make the first steps. See what I mean. I’m exhausting.
This is supposed to be the paragraph where I map your way. I tell you to draw a circle with the goal in it on the top of the page and then one at the bottom with a “YOU ARE HERE” written in red. The blank space in the middle is where we ask the questions, where we plan the steps, where we divide by “time left” on the planet and so forth, and decide if where we want to go and where we are are as far away as we think. Maybe we are satisfied with where we are? Doubt it. But maybe.
If we aren’t okay, we owe ourselves two things. First, if we want to change, do so. If we don’t. Then try and quit wasting your time thinking about it. Everyone says they want to up and move to Colorado. Few do.
I’m not quashing dreams. Just giving you some options.
This is a lot for a Saturday, but if I’ve gotta think of this shit all day every day, then so do you. Our lives are short.
What would you be if you could be anything?
#hugsandhi5s
