personal growth – The Other Shoe

It’s all in the narrative. Turning points are just parts of the story that lead you to the next chapter.

We arrive in this world as cute little blank slates. We come with no instructions and no crystal ball to prophesy about our future selves. As wobbling, curious toddlers, we can’t predict if our home life or school years will inspire us to our full potential or leave us feeling less than. We have no way to foresee what our fates hold. Our cuddly, bawling, newborn selves certainly have no clue. It’s all luck of the draw.

Of course, that fact has never has stopped us from bumbling into life full throttle. We charge ahead until we reach a turning point, where street signs are often as useless as Google maps. I’m sure, like me, you’re often wondered who you would have been or how things might have been different if we had a plan and a map. But crossroads, like most things in life, are not always clear. So, we stumble ahead, armed with our instincts and whatever confidence, or lack of, we were given for the journey. We do the best we can and, while we don’t always navigate as well as we wish we could have, we often we get it more than right. Sometimes we even stick the landing. Yea, us.

Life is always at some turning point. Irwin Edman

As kids we’re pretty much at the mercy of our parents/caregivers and the home, school and financial situation we were plopped into. For the most part, we wind our way through the maze of adolescent and teen years without breaking too many things along the way. We do the best we can with the knowledge and capability we have as young people, which means we’re pretty cocky about knowing everything about nothing. Well played, kid.

We make plenty of mistakes and have plenty of excuses until one day, we cross over to the age of responsibility with no net beneath us. Congratulations. You’re reached your first big turning point. You’ll have plenty of missteps but you’re finally on your own and it feels pretty damn good – most of the time. However, as we find out soon enough, adulting isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be and the tightrope we walk is often unsteady.

Decisions are all on us now. Sometimes, we make pretty damn good ones; sometimes they’re more than questionable. If we’re lucky, we marry the love of our life or, at least they seem to be. We take first steps into careers we either love or tolerate. We inhabit our first home and learned to balance work and digital checkbooks. We become parents, ushering a brand new generation into the world. Endless schedules posted on refrigerators dictate our stressed and busy world. Yet, for the most part, we’re happily content within the bubble of our family dream — until another turning point sneaks around the corner.

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Life is just a continual balance of letting go — and holding on.

Photo by Fuu J on Unsplash

How often do we have to DO this thing? All. The. Time. From the instant we open our newborn eyes, we begin the process of letting go. And it doesn’t get easier from there. Life is an endless parade of leaving what we know for the unknown.

We have to lose the training wheels to bike on our own. We leave our mothers at the door on our first day in school. Letting go is what we do. Remember when you discovered the jolly fat man in the overloaded sleigh didn’t travel the world by reindeer to drop gifts by the sackful down our chimneys? Letting go of that was harsh, right? Ditto the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy. No one wants to give up what makes our hearts happy.

“One of the hardest lessons in life is letting go. Whether it’s guilt, anger, love or loss, change is never easy. We fight to hold on and we fight to let go”.

As we leave childhood behind, as training wheels become motorized in our first car, and teen-postered bedrooms becomes college dorms, we release more of the familiar. We get married, have children and one day, we let them go, too. As we learn more of the world, as hurts begin to form scar tissue, our naivete and innocence is left behind. Our hearts get nicked and dented and, the more we open them, the more we risk. Yet, we do it anyway.

The first time we feel the heavy impact of grown up ‘letting go’ is when a person we love walks away. They say sometimes you win and sometimes you learn, but the learning thing can kneecap you almost as much as the person who made the exit. From our first crush, a dating split or divorce, it ain’t ever easy. Breaking the same heart that loves someone so deeply sadly is the price of admission in life.

“Getting over painful experiences is like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.” C.S.Lewis

Then someone you love dies, and their leaving wasn’t because their love stopped but because their heart did. That’s when the loss of letting go is multiplied endlessly. Whether you lose a parent, sibling, spouse or the very worst – a child, this letting go takes a mega chunk out of everything that makes you tick. And it takes quite a while to get your balance back, your trust in life and to repair your fractured heart.

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