It’s funny how long it can take us to round back to influential places in our past. There are times it’s taken me substantially longer to get back to somewhere I adore then I imagined but I still get back eventually.
Actually if I look at it, that almost always seems to be the case. Life has a way of forcing me to slow down. As if stopping me in my tracks and saying “I know you’ve got all these big plans and big dreams and you think you need to do them now, but you have all the time in the world”. I’m still learning to listen.
One thing I know for sure is that life never goes as planned. You will never follow that guideline or timeline you try to write for yourself. That use to terrify me, it use to hinder my life and hold me back. But now I know that the best things in life are often unexpected. Constant traveling taught me that, moving continents alone taught me that, being a nomad taught me that.
While chasing my dreams I’ve encountered things I never expected. I went places or met people or had experiences that were more than I could have imagined. For example the happiest day of my life was spent in a city I hadn’t even planned to travel to with complete strangers on a spur of the moment trip recommended by another stranger. One of those strangers became a friend who I ended up staying with in my travels a month later.
Some of these unexpected things can catch you off guard. I’ve had things derail me, knock me off my feet, get me to change direction. And at the time I admit I wasn’t always happy or thankful to have those changes in direction. But most of the delays I’ve had put me in the right place in the right time. And the memories I have made because of that are ones I wouldn’t change.
Honestly I didn’t think my life would be where it is today but I’m so happy I got here. In no way am I disappointed in where my life came out, in fact I am overjoyed at how different it is from where I thought it would be. I look at all the places I’ve been and the people I’ve met along the way and I am so thankful that I have the courage to go after what I want and to roll with the punches even if some of them knock me down for awhile.
I am the type of person that no matter how long it takes me, how unplanned it is, I always achieve what I say I will. You see there are some people who are all talk and no action. I am not one of those people, I am the opposite talking about my dreams and then turn it into fruition. Sometimes it just takes me longer to meet myself, to battle myself, and to find out exactly when is best to go after the adventures I want to chase. But no matter how long it takes me I keep achieving my dreams.
I’ve learned to succumb to the knowledge that life has its own plans. Yes you must go after your passions and joy – you’ve got to steer your life in the direction you want. But you can’t get caught up in the timeline or the expectation of what you thought it should look like. I use to worry myself into a dark hole about where I “should” be. Until I learned to just let myself be, to embrace my joys and passions in the moment and see where they take me.
You see we all want to be somewhere, we all want our life to be in a certain place. But often we get so caught up in what we don’t have we forget to embrace what we do have and be grateful for it. We loose ourselves and our current lives by always wishing we were some place else instead of accepting where we are and making the most of it. Some people end up looking back having wasted weeks, months, years on feeling bad about where their life is at. Only to figure out that it was never in their complete control anyway.
Life isn’t about getting to where you want to be, it isn’t about getting so caught up in our future we forget to live our present. Or getting so nostalgic for our past because we aren’t happy with our present. It’s easy to forget that life has it’s plans regardless of what ours are. And life has a funny and ironic and sometimes cruel way of getting us to where we need to be even if it’s not necessarily where we want to be.
There are times life took me somewhere I needed to be and it took retrospect to see that the lessons I learned helped me to be who I am today. And they also helped me to get to those unexpected adventures and places that are more than I ever imagined. Life has a way of surprising us but if we follow what brings us happiness those surprises lead us down roads to places that are beyond our wildest dreams.
Living Life Without Limits 