Switching seasons

The colors around us change.

So do we. The process of becoming who we are is filled with challenge, so is our daily life.

"We come into this world hardwired for struggle" Brene Brown, Sociological reseacher.

Yet somehow we become the people that we once looked up to. We are Engineers, Writers, Teachers, Nurses, Doctors, Coaches, and helpful strangers.

It isn't what we thought. Sometimes it drives us crazy. Being an adult seemed so much simpler when we weren't one, and of course all we will ever be doing is becoming an adult. Who ever really makes it to the destination? Now that we are in pursuit, the destination doesn't seem to be much closer now than it was a few years ago, unless of course you look at our resumes.

Somehow we keep looking forward, our eyes always on the next task. Take a moment...

Today is a day to think of how you have changed, just as the world is around us. We have come far, and maybe it is hard for us to notice but look back far enough and your world will turn on it's head. Remember when you couldn't cook for yourself? Remember when you thought eight dollars an hour was great? Remember when you couldn't fix a flat or keep track of your wallet much less an entire life(but I still can't find my cell phone)? Be impressed with yourself, you should be.

I have a ten year reunion coming up and it reminds me how much we have changed. I sit around a table and all of my friends are married (I am not really surprised I am not), we all have somewhat serious sounding jobs, and everyone is more at peace with themselves and the struggle of life than they ever have been.

We have changed for the better. And we have changed together.

I work at Sugar Bowl Academy

I am on team Kokatat

Talullah Gorge, Georgia

The hike into Tallulah gave me extra time to think on this particularly warm day in April. Here is a shot of the Put-in for the Tallulah, which is earned after 540 steps down a well maintained staircase. 

This great run only has water 8 days a year, a huge staircase and only room for two people to put on at a time. It makes for a long wait. The 90 minutes it took to get down to the water was more than enough time to get to pondering. On this particular day I was thinking about the past, as we are always wont to do. What choices have I made?  What could be different? We have a tendency to have some remorse about past decision sometimes, we repeat decisions in our head and try to play out the alternative scenarios. 

This kind of thinking is dangerous, it gnaws at us and pulls us away from our current situation. It has been shown that people who tend to ruminate are more likely to suffer from depression. We can't spend a lot of time questioning our decisions of the past if we want to be happy now. 

We need distractions from these thoughts, to break the cycle.

Oceana provides this kind of break.

We have to reconcile with the moment, and not the what ifs. It is not that we need to forget these decisions, in fact we must remember them and learn from them. But we must move past it, incorporate it into our self and move on.

This is what the Tallulah brought me back to. Oceana cleared the slate on the past and let me flow through to now. We have made the decisions we have and all we can do is learn from them and push forward to make the best decisions we can for the future. What we have is right now, what we have is effort in this present moment, to make the best of what is around, which is beautiful.