You push and fight and work and struggle and win and fail and fight some more. You feel good and bad and take stock and wish you hadn’t and then feel better and stronger and ready to go on. Life goes ahead of you, not waiting, not wondering, not judging but always watching for you to be up for the next challenge. If you’re a parent or a spouse or a partner or a child or a student or a professional or a writer or whatever you might be, you understand. From the moment you wake each morning, you’re on and you choose and you hope for another day in which you stride more than you stumble.
How do you do that, when there’s so much going on and so much behind you and finding your place in it all is overwhelming?
Eyes forward, my friends.
Of course you’ll remember, good and bad, and of course you’ll worry, even when times are good. But you’ll dream, too, and you’ll want. You’ll hope and believe. You’ll pick yourself up and forgive yourself and look to others for help, but not for validation or approval. You’ll be as sensitive and weak as you are and not apologize. You’ll be strong and determined, too. You’ll be exactly what you’re meant to be, and you’ll demand your place–first from yourself and then from others.
Eyes forward, to me, means more than confidence. It’s awareness that where I am isn’t where I’ll always be. No taking the good for granted or assuming the bad is all there is. Celebrate, learn, plan, let go, continue, fight, but breathe through it all and get out of your own way. The rest is noise and my personal stuff and the emotional damage I do to myself when I’m unsure of what else to do, so why not make a mess while I’m stalled.
Why not?
Because my job is to keep my eyes forward and go on.
Yours is, too.
All around me is proof of how lucky I am, how fortunate and blessed, even as the next challenge bears down. All around you, you’ll find the same. All we have to do is see it. Look forward, not backwards or to the side or down at our feet worried that we’re going to trip up and mess up and get it wrong. Whatever “it” is, look forward, look it in the eye, and SEE it. Then step into the opening it creates and conquer that next step and then the next.
Have a great weekend, my friends. It’s going to be absolutely beautiful!
This is one of the nicest, feel-good blog post I’ve read in a very long time. It made me smile. I lost my office to my husband a few months ago, it was my choice. Since then, I’ve been moving my desk around like a toddler with a pull toy. I finally put it under 3 windows facing the backyard. You’d think the changing leaves, deer, squirrels and birds would be a distraction but they serve the function: eyes forward, watching the seasons change, life moves forward
Wow, I can see how it is you write the fiction you write. It’s you, it’s who you are. What you believe. Your stories are your walking the walk and talking the talk. Or is that walking the talk? Anyway, your outlook is beautiful and one that I need to emulate, because I get so tangled up in the briar patches of my past and the foggy tangles of my present and future. “Eyes forward and go on.” Thank you for this.
You have a great weekend too!