"I
suppose this is what I mean when I say we cannot possibly know what will
manifest in our lives. We live and have experiences and leave people
we love and get left by them. People we thought would be with us
forever aren't and people we didn't know would come into our lives do.
Our work here is to keep faith with that, to put it in a box and wait.
To trust that someday we will know what it means, so that when the
ordinary miraculous is revealed to us we will be there ... grateful for the smallest things." ~ Cheryl Strayed
That quote really is a kick in the pants, isn't it? (By the way, if you haven't read any Cheryl Strayed, by all means you have my permission to leave this blog immediately and go get your hands on her books.) Of course she's right. And now that I've gotten a year older, ahem, I'm finally starting to understand what she means. In my late twenties, I would have been: Whatever. I'm sad, leave me be. In my thirties I was almost there, but not quite. But now that I find myself firmly planted in my forties, I see the wisdom in the leaving and being left behind. The down-right necessity of faith. That holding on means just that. Hold on. You never know what will manifest in your life. One day it will all make sense. Each experience means something. You'll be grateful for all of the bumps in the road that landed you where you need to be today.


