Is life really a long and winding road like John Lennon described it? Or is it a spiral, ever moving upward, wobbly though it may be?
I believe it’s a spiral. I believe as we go through life, we see the same challenges over and over again in slightly different forms. That is, until we overcome them. Once we overcome a particular difficulty and we have learned the lesson that it provides, we grow a little. Our spiral grows upward.
The wobbly part is our distractions. But why do we create these seemingly useless distractions? Ahh, that’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?
I believe it is all a part of the plan. You see, I believe we create distractions in order to deliver to ourselves a new problem to be solved. Yes, that’s what pushes our spiral ever upward. And the more problems we solve, the more we grow.
Just look at nature. Everything all around us happens in cycles. The seasons come and go, and then they come back again. Trees lose their leaves in the autumn, and then they grow new ones again. The ocean tide comes in and then goes back out again. Life itself is on a cycle.
So, what about our lives? We grow up, get married and have babies. That in itself is a distraction, although a good one for most women. We put our lives on hold to raise the children. Some of us quit our jobs, stop working out, and put our hobbies aside. After all, our souls are being fed with the joy of motherhood.
And then one day the children grow up and move out. I remember the day my only daughter left for college. I cried for a week straight. But why was I crying? Was I mourning her loss, or was I mourning the loss of my sweet distraction? Sometimes, our distractions keep us from looking at the hard task ahead of working on ourselves.
What did I do then? Well, we can find all sorts of new distractions, can’t we? Some are more destructive than others. We can start drinking, gambling, and cheating on our husbands, or we can fill our time with shopping, overeating, and worrying about the future. Or we can go back, back on that long and winding road.
Funny thing, that road leads to a door alright, but it is we who open that door.
Are we starting again? In a sense, maybe, but not really. If we go back to the things we loved before, it’s different now, and if we’re lucky, it’s even better because we’ve changed.
We’ve grown due to our life’s experiences and challenges – our distractions.
Now, those childhood hobbies can become our art and our self-expression. We begin again to put our health first. We start working out again, going for long walks, reading, and doing the things that feed our souls.
Our spiral has moved upward. This can be the prime of our lives. Now that my daughter has grown and is pursuing her own goals, I am free to go back to being me, only a better, wiser me.
The circle of life.
Go out and do the things that gave you joy as a child. That’s your true heart's desire. The things that gave you pleasure before life’s distractions got in the way.
Our soul is crying out to us. As the last lines of that famous Beatles’ song suggests, let’s not keep it waiting.
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