Something clicked.
I find it interesting how often in life we forget. We learn something new about ourselves, we forget. We learn what we want, we forget. We learn what habits help us, we forget. We learn how we want to be treated, we forget.
We learn a new lesson, we forget.
I want to remember.
I also find it interesting how it’s actually not that simple. We don’t just “forget”. We, based on what circumstances we are in or what experiences we’ve had in our life, simply stow things away. We stow things away and then they build. We learn the same lesson a million times in different situations, different failures, different bodies of different humans — we learn the same lesson a million times in different ways until one day it clicks. One day all of those experiences and tidbits of information are unlocked and each and everyone of them makes sense.
I’m okay with this way of life, because I understand that things happen for me, and not to me. I trust the timing of the universe and I trust that my life is unfolding how it should. But, I write so that I can also perhaps expedite the process. When I’m feeling lost — I can go back and read the hundreds of lessons from my past to remember that the wisdom I am looking for is within me — and it always has been.
This thought process is what brought me here today. The last several months (okay, years), I’ve been learning lessons. I’ve been learning lessons about who I am, what I want, and what I value. I recently moved home to Montana after five years in Boston, and it’s been a raw, honest, challenging (and fun) experience getting real about what I’m looking for (next).
The last couple weeks, all of the lessons I’ve been stowing away have been coming to fruition. Or at least, some very important ones. They’ve been clicking.
And I want to remember.
Ever since I started putting pen to paper, I’ve written about my need for external validation & accomplishments, feeling lost, wondering where I belong — what will bring me joy. I’ve written about it in a million different ways, while saying more or less the same thing. The same thing being that, no matter what I do, no one — no thing — will make me happy until I do.
Nothing will bring me happiness except for me.
And while I’ve always known this somewhere in the depths of my soul — while the same lesson has been coming at me in a million different ways — I always forget. I constantly strategize what is next, what I “need” to do — what will be the ultimate “thing” for me.
“Where will I live? What will I do? What do I want? Who will I be?”
This week something clicked. I finally fully realized the weight I’ve been carrying with me the entirety of my mid-twenties to 30. I have been depending on outside circumstances to make me happy.
I have forgotten how to depend on me.
Today is the day to take back the power I have given to every single other thing in my life to bring me joy — and today is the day to give that power back to me.
It’s not, “where will I live that I will be happy?” It’s, “where will I live that I will love to experience and enjoy right now?”
It’s not, “who will make me happy?” It’s, “who do I enjoy that expands my mind and heart?”
It’s not, “what do I need to do?” It’s, “what do I enjoy? What allows me to live the way I feel my best?”
These are the questions I now ask myself. These are the questions I can’t wait to find the answers to.
Because I’ve learned this lesson enough times. I’ve tried finding happiness in every single thing other than in myself.
There is nowhere left to go.
And so, today is the day I take back the power that has always been within me to fly. The power that has always been within me to experience the world and life just as it is — not how I hope it will be. Today is the day I begin to bring my fullest self to the day, rather than asking the day to bring my fullest self to me.
What will happen when I show up as the best me in my daily life? Who will I meet? What will I see? Who will I become?
Something clicked, and I intend to find out.
We spend so much of our lives wondering why good things aren’t happening to us, we forget that we were put here to be the good that happens to things.