Green Grass Envy

Have you ever felt like life was passing you by?

Like you were watching everyone else doing laps in the fast lane while you slowly puttered along in your lane - the not fast lane...

I was a little taken back when someone asked me this question today. Because, to be honest, I really have not been in a space where I had the luxury of looking up and looking around. But I have definitely been there before. I think we all have. In a world where people are very open and equally selective about the ways they tell the stories of their lives, it gets easy to fall into a pattern of comparison and get caught up. Add to all that the realization that we are "Twenty-somethings" and we should be making all those giant moves and decisions now, anyone focused on just making it day to day starts to get bogged down by the mundane and not see the big picture.

I feel lucky that I have found a way to be content in my bubble. Because I have learned that life is about the big things but so much more about the small. It's about getting a big diamond on a special day and getting a wave from a baby in her stroller on a random afternoon. It's about good news and bad news, and stealing your brother's beer from the fridge, just to try it out - and staying up all night because it gave you gas. Life is about being the belle of the freaking ball and not being able to keep the boys' names straight and it's about loving yourself for a while, because nobody was getting it just right.

Your life cannot pass you by when you learn to see each moment for what it really is: a special scene caught in a bubble of time, never to be experienced again by anyone else in the world. And sometimes it's big enough to share. But most of the time when you are honest with yourself, it really is just for you to treasure. And it is your job to live your own life and be present in your own moments, and guard carefully everything that you let in that has very little to do with you.

And if that doesn't work, remember the last time you jazzed up a story to make it better...and think what we all do when we tell you our stories...

For you, CJ, because you are amazing, blah and all.

xoxo