Awake, Alive, Now.

This week I just plum didn't have the time to do anything adventurous.  Between studying for midterms, doing hours of job training, and writing a nice big paper for my marketing class, I barely had the time to even go on a quick jog!  But I'm not complaining!  Honest, this is just what we like to call a little antecedent action, or setting the stage if you will.

Something I did find the time to do around midnight last night was finish reading a book I started some time ago. 

Don't let the title psych you out, it was a phenomenal read!  The two best things I learned from it didn't even directly apply to that F-word you see either.  I'll share one of the best things right now.

In one chapter Geneen Roth wrote about receiving a letter from a woman who spoke about being unhappy with the stage of life she was in.  This lady mentioned feeling stuck in her current career being "No One in Particular", yet having to stay where she was in order to be "Going Places" to become "Someone Special".  In reply to the woman's pity-party letter, Geneen wrote:

"Even when you become Something because they were right, you really were Going Places - even when you arrive at being Someone because you are where you were going - your life may not be any better if you haven't learned to be awake, alive, now.  To take this moment for what it is.  It's just as easy to be miserable when you are Someone Special as when you are No One in Particular.  Because even Someone Special still has to live in her own skin and deal with boredom, rejection, loneliness, disappointment.  You might as well learn how to pay attention now.  How to inhabit the life you've chosen.  How to take up every inch of your skin.  Occupy the space in this body you were given.  It's your place.  Only yours." (Roth 61)

I'll admit it.  I'm guilty.  But not today, here, and now.  For the past two years, ever since I dropped out of school at NAIT, I lived looking forward.  I saw life as being when I finally got myself back into school and began my quest to a career, completely neglecting my day to day circumstances.  I was a nobody as long as I wasn't in school.  I was humiliated to answer questions with the statement,"No, actually I'm working."  Nothing I completed or accomplished really accounted for anything, because I wasn't in school.  I couldn't have been more wrong!

Although I didn't fully appreciate what I did back then, during the past two years, I do now.  How could I not be fulfilled and happy with doing the following?:

Being an EFY Counsellor,

Travelling to Peru,

Being a FHE Ma in London Road ward in Lethbridge,

Working in the Service Industry,

Being an EFY Counsellor AGAIN!,

Being seriously up to no good,

Having my Best Friend get married,

Being lucky enough to work and learn at an AMAZING job,

And making new, amazing friends along the way!

The grass right under your feet is green and if you would take a second to sit on it, lay on it, pick it, throw it at someone, and roll around in it, you would realize that it's exactly as green here as it is on the other side.

I've learned my lesson.  Don't let two years go by thinking that you aren't living because you aren't doing what you want to be doing.  And don't let time pass by uncherished because you're waiting for the ideal circumstances.  Life won't be better when you're dating someone, when you can afford a new car, when you're married, when you're done school (or finally in school!), when summer comes, when you weigh ten pounds less, when your complexion clears up, when you're out of debt.  It will be exactly how it is now.  So learn to love it.

Although I didn't get to do what I would have liked this week because I was weighed down by homework and work, I still loved it.  Do yourself a favor: be awake, be alive, and realize that life is right now.