Not Looking Back

I wrote a decade in review post. I started to write a post for 2009, figuring that it deserved its own. As I reviewed the events of the last ten years, and especially this last year, a clarity set in.

The last ten years have brought me to where I am today. This past year made me who I am. Those collective experiences have taught me everything I know and believe. There is no more to learn from the past. Those lessons have been well learned through the blood, sweat and tears I expended surviving them.

When you’re twenty, you’re confident because you think the world is your oyster.

When you’re thirty, you’re confident because you know who you are, what you want, and how to get it.

A quiet confidence sets in as you realize: things hardly ever turn out the way you envision them. Better in some places, worse in others, and generally beyond imagination.  You realize that being excited or fearful is a choice, that you either make decisions or let them be made for you, and you’re ready to make some decisions. There is a feeling of capability, of understanding realistically what you have to work with and how to make the most of it.

I’ve always believed that things happen for a reason. Not in anything as defined as karma or reincarnation or fate as any of us know the strict definitions of those words. I believe in the fluid ability of the universe to right itself. I still cannot explain tragedy, pain, sadness and loss, but I do believe that as hard as it is for us to cope with, there is some cosmic reasoning, a puzzling beauty to it all.

So, I could have told you the story about the girl who didn’t go to college, who worked in restaurants and hotels and a car dealership, who answered phones and did administrative work. The girl who married young and spent her twenties living a chaotic whirlwind life filled with a million triumphs and defeats. The girl who found herself in a marriage gone horribly wrong. The girl who lost a grandmother, an almost brother in law, a husband, two cats and a dog this year.

I’m not that girl anymore. I’m the girl that survived all of that, the girl that in so many ways, has thrived in spite of it.

It is time to set myself free from this decade, from all of its lessons and puzzles, and to use what I’ve learned to navigate the next ten years of my life.

They are going to be incredible.

“Feel the wind
And set yourself the bolder course
Keep your heart
As open as a shrine
You’ll sail the perfect line

And after all
The dead ends and the lessons learned
After all
The stars have turned to stone
There’ll be peace
Across the great unbroken void
All benign
In your time
You’ll be fine
In your time”

-bob segar

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