Sunday, July 29, 2012

How a Look Back Can Help You Move Forward

“I always knew looking back on the tears would make me laugh. But I never knew looking back on the laughs would make me cry.” ~Unknown
It’s the darndest thing about life. You have the most heart-wrenching experiences that you think you’ll never recover from…only to find yourself a few years down the road looking back at those very same events with a chuckle. Then you have moments where you laugh uproariously with your girlfriends over something completely nonsensical and you imagine that this will be a memory that incites giggles forever more…yet, gazing at an old scrapbook or reading an old email brings that silly moment to mind and you find yourself weeping over the girl you once were. It’s so fascinating to me how life requires you to gain perspective and distance to TRULY understand the beauty and magic of the experience.
One hot May afternoon several years ago, I was walking back from lunch and discovered my “Mr. Big” waiting for me there.. Since we spotted each other from a distance, there were several moments where we silently gravitated toward one another, and for me, on that beautiful day, the world stood still as I drew closer to him like a moth to a flame. I can still feel the sunshine…hear the birds chirping …see him standing there, so clearly…like it happened only moments instead of years ago. I paused in front of him, a big smile on my face, and with a dramatic flair (he loves the dramatic flair), he said not a word, but swept me back into a Hollywood kiss, right there. Big and I laughed until we were breathless at the thought of being “caught” …and though I can’t remember where we went from there or what the rest of that day entailed…I can remember that moment like it was yesterday. It was one of those perfect moments life sometimes surprises you with that you take a silent snapshot of in your mind because you know you’ll want to remember it for the rest of your life.
And I have. There is never a day that I don’t pause for a moment and glance back seeing his smiling face, remembering the feeling of being crazily, wildly, insanely in love. Even on the coldest winter day, I can recall the warmth of his kiss. It’s a memory that once upon a time, caused me great pain. I would try and deny that memory, dance past it like it didn’t exist, close the floodgates of my memory to what used to be and what might have been. Today, though, I look back and smile. Laugh, even. It has become my favorite memory…and I look at it as a precious time capsule of the girl I used to be...long before I became the woman I am today. It’s a line in my story that I’m grateful for. HE is a line in my story that I’m grateful for. He has inspired so much of my writing, and though his presence is gone from my life, his influence remains; reminding me that sometimes the best love DOESN’T make sense…and that magical movie moments CAN occur in real life…and that if my heart was THAT capable of loving the WRONG one, imagine how completely wondrous it will be when I meet the RIGHT one.
I tell you this story to remind you that not all memories need to be thrown away. Some simply need to be stored away. You may not believe it now, but there WILL come a day when you will look back on memories that once made you cry with a smile. And they will remind you of your strength, your resilience, your courage. It’s OKAY to look back every once in awhile, as long as you visit the past and don’t move in. After all, if we never look back, we can never TRULY know how far we’ve come.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

If I could have a conversation with my younger SELF

I think all of us have SOMETHING we wish we could travel back in time and tell our teenage self.

Don’t perm your hair to within an inch of its life.
Reconsider that getting skunk drunk at 16… .

And then there are the bigger things…the decisions that arguably changed the course of our lives forevermore.

Think twice before falling in love with the boy with the temper. What starts as smoke almost always results in fire.
Appreciate the people in your life while you still have them. Love is eternal…but life itself is brief.

As for me, I can never really decide what I would do if handed the keys to a time machine and told I could travel to any point in the past to change what happened…or any point in the future to see how it all turns out. If a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world can cause a hurricane in another part of the world…do I really want to take the chance of telling the Younger Me something that might alter even one teeny, tiny thing along the way? Didn’t every bit of it – the smiles, the tears, the laughs, the fears, the hurts, the pains, the sunshine, the rain - create the person I am today?
I recently posed this question to my friends: “If you could travel back in time, what is the ONE piece of advice you would give your teenage self?” And the answers I might get maybe so heartfelt, so vulnerable, so authentic….

If given the chance, I WOULD sit down for a conversation with my teenage self. And after sharing a few giggles with her about the fact that while we once thought we’d be married with kids at age 25, we’re 26 and single…I’d tell her this…

“Remember that the way you see yourself is not always how the world sees you. All the little insecurities and flaws and imperfections you think are so obvious to everyone else aren’t nearly as visible as you think they are. You only get one shot at this thing. Be bold and confident. The people who snub you and intimidate you NOW won’t be able to hold a candle to you later! So take chances, take leaps of faith, bet on yourself, kiss the boy, go out on more limbs. Even if things go horribly awry, at least you’ll be left with a fabulous memory instead of a painful regret.”
Then I’d give her a great big hug, and tell her to throw down her expectations, throw up her hands, & enjoy the ride. Because it’s not going to turn out the way she thought it would...
It’s going to turn out better.

Happiness

“Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.” ~Elizabeth Gilbert