It happens in the blink of an eye. One day, you’re 12 years old, riding your bike, playing with friends. You have no clue what the real world is like. The trials and tribulations that will be thrown your way but in that very moment, you know exactly what you want in life. Who you want to be, what you want to be. You know when you want to be married and the type of house you want to live in. You know exactly how many kids you can see yourself chasing after and tucking in at the end of the day. It seems SO simple, right?
But just like that. You’re grown and thats when it hits you. All of the things you wanted to accomplish that for one reason or another, didn’t happen. The path you took, is slightly different than the one you mapped out. Your job? not everything you thought it would be. Married? Let alone kids? Those deadlines you gave yourself are long gone.
It hits you like a ton of bricks. It can feel like in that moment all hope for that picture you painted is gone. Maybe you thought you found your fairytale ending and it didn’t work out. Maybe the dream job you wanted, just wasn’t for you. But it’s never too late. You can take a new path. You can make a change. It might seem like all is lost at times, like the deadlines have passed and thats it. But life doesn’t work like that.
We give ourselves time frames to accomplish things based on what society tells us but the truth is, all that does is make us complacent. It makes us tolerate things that don’t actually fulfill us. That don’t make our hearts and minds happy. Most times, they aren’t healthy. We settle because it’s what “we are supposed to do”. We hang on to bad relationships, careers that don’t inspire us, cities that we’ve outgrown. We stay put because we fear judgement, failure and just being lonely.
But it’s not too late to start a new journey, to set new goals or to chase new dreams. It’s okay to walk away from a bad relationship or career. It’s okay to take a risk, to move to a new city. To start fresh.
We all paint pictures of life, sometimes we just forget that we’re allowed to take them off the wall and replace them.
-MC
Marilyn Colwell 