My mother tells me stories about her life that shock me. That surprise me. They make me wonder how one person could possibly have lived all of that. As a kid, I couldn’t help but sometimes wonder if her stories were inventions, or at the very least, exaggerations. But I figured, believing them was always so much fun, so why not? Add to that, her mothers’ were pretty wild, too. Maybe it was just in the blood.
Looking back on my own life, I’ve already got quite a few stories to tell. Some extraordinary. Some sad. Some just flat out embarrassing. Stories that make me wonder if my son will someday doubt me. Stories that reflect courage, bravery, failure and a lot of change. I’m sure if you look back, you’ve got stories that do, too.
These stories are ones of transition, transformation. I have made big decisions (and small ones) that changed my life in big ways. Sometimes, these changes were out my control, and the only decision to be made was how to handle them. Ahem, ‘rona. So, I have asked myself a lot if I made the right choice. If I am heading in the right direction. Sometimes the answer is yes and sometimes the answer is no. But the question is, how do you know?
I’ll start with the ugly truth: sometimes you just don’t know. Sometimes, when you’re just getting started, you can’t be sure. What you do know is that you have that tugging feeling, that aching feeling, that tells you you just have to do the thing you’re about to do. It’s a dream/choice/change that occupies your thoughts, that you can’t kick out of your head. It’s the thing you can’t stop thinking about.
But sometimes you do know. And when you do, when you’re on the right path, your body reacts to what your mind isn’t sure of. Does this new thing make you feel energized? Excited? A little bit nervous? But mostly the giddy kind? Does it scare the shit out of you and inspire you at the same time? Does it make you feel motivated? Does it make you feel like you’re growing? Meeting new parts of yourself? Seeing yourself in a different light? A truer light? Does it feel like you’re coming into your own?
After the body reacts, your environment starts to change. Are you now meeting people that inspire you to continue? Do you find yourself in communities you hadn’t previously been apart of? Are opportunities opening up for you to continue deeper down this path? If the answers to these questions are yes, you, my friend, are headed in the right direction. If the answers aren’t so clear or the opportunities are not (yet) presenting themselves, you just might need to look at your approach from a different angle.
The “right” path isn’t always a clearly marked one. In fact, it seldom is. But the signs are there to tell you you are headed in the direction you’re meant to. At least for now. Your “right” path will twist and turn and sometimes even send you back in the direction you came from. Be open to re-evaluating where it is you want to go every few steps you take down your path. Just to be sure you wouldn’t rather look at the scenery elsewhere. And if you do, that’s okay, too 😉
// Here’s a story: fifteen minutes after I took this photo in the Atlas Mountains, my ear was licked by a random sweatsuit-wearing camel trainer on the side of the road. He gave me digestive biscuits. And a permanent trauma of camels.