I was thinking about us today. Remembering those years when you had hair and I had a waistline. Back when we sat, feet to feet on the couch, scheming our next adventure late into the night. It was a time when it all seemed doable and barriers were more like speed bumps than impossibilities.
When, in the naiveté of our youth, we still believed that we were different, better, smarter than all those who’d come before us. We thought…no knew… we’d make it where others had failed. We’d raise our kids better; spend our money more wisely; work harder; and reach higher than all those before us. We were different.
Oh the things we planned, the sites we soared, the adventures we mapped out in those late night sessions, those long country drives, and those images we conjured in our minds of what we would do…when we could afford it.
But nobody told us that life is what happens…while you’re waiting for life to happen. And so it did and we didn’t even know it. We raised some kids, went to college and then we blinked our eyes and twenty years went by. We didn’t know that time was not limitless; that twenty years was really just a moment away; or that ‘someday’ might be too late.
We didn’t know that for every step forward there would be two steps back. We didn’t know that kids cost eight times more than the parenting books claim or that credit cards were the spawn of Satan and would send us into financial Hell on more than one occasion.
It never occurred to us, as we planned those great adventures and dreamed so big of all we’d do, that at some point we’d be thankful just to be able to get out of bed in the morning.
And though we may have rerouted our trip, it wasn’t any less adventurous. It wasn’t any less beautiful. It wasn’t any less perfect.
And the best part is…it aint over. No regrets, no looking back.
Let’s just pretend we’re starting out in life…instead of ending up.
