I hate that I'm thinking about using the "life is a journey" metaphor, but cliches are sometimes truths. I often look back on my life, see what my circumstances are now that are different from another previous point in my personal history. It's one of my Strengths, they call it "context". It's when one is good at learning from history; seeing how things from the then and there came together to be the here and now. The people with this strength find comfort in this process, - I do.
The last few days at work have been busy. There are things pulling me every direction and every day I'm re-writing my To Do list. I have to stop and remind myself how fortunate I am to have my job. I quickly think back to a year ago when I was just leaving the honeymoon period at a job that was on a steep incline to painfully frustrating. Before that, I did something I loved but it wasn't long-term, which is ironic because it was incredibly short-lived due to a freak accident. Although I guess I should know myself well enough to know klutziness isn't abnormal.
Again, the cliche is true: it's not without looking back that you see how far you've come.
A lot of times in looking back I find hope that even when things are bleak and there's no dots to connect between where you are and where you want to be, it's possible to get there. That is life! (Ugh, I haven't written for pleasure in a while, forgive the oozing of cliches.) Sometimes you put one foot in front of the other without really knowing what you'll walk through, because life doesn't let you stand still.
I'm actually kind of a fan of getting lost. It gives me a chance to explore something new, experience something new, and at the end of the day there's always some way to get back home. There are seasons where we are forced to do this. There's an Australian aboriginal practice about this that [in theory] I'm fond of called a walkabout. While it's conceptually geared toward adolescent males as a rite of passage to go off and find themselves in the wilderness, I like it. It is an apt metaphor to the times in life when you don't really know where you're going, or the purpose of the walking, but in it you learn a lot about who you are.
Maybe it's not one specific event, maybe yours wasn't when you were an adolescent or even limited to one age in your life - heck, maybe you have never had your "walkabout"! Dreams are meant to be grasped and deserts meant to be explored, should you dare to try. And maybe along the way you will learn to hope.
