You’ve come a long way, baby!
You’ve got a long way to go!
Sometimes this ride, we call life, feels like a roller coaster. It seems like you just got on and you suddenly realize the ride is coming back to the loading station and it’s time to get off.
Other times it seems like our ride in life is like Frodo trying to destroy the one true ring in the fires of mount doom. Long, Tedious and filled with interactions with people that remind you of Gollum.
No matter how you look at it. No matter what your experience. You can only rely on one thing, as soon as you think you’ve got it figured out, it will change.
I keep working off this fantasy in my head that some day I will be perfect. Some day I will attain a point of enlightenment or wisdom where nothing I come across phases me and I’ll understand the nuances of how the world presents itself to me and how I respond to the world. At this point in life, I, at least, have enough wisdom, to say to myself compassionately, “You can keep dreaming Kevin, or you can decide to wake up. But fantasy is the right word for that line of thought.”
This morning, as I was making breakfast, my daughter was reading a book. She’s just getting the reading thing. She recognizes letters and is learning to sound them out. As I finished up some dishes I overheard her sounding out the word cat. “Cuh-Ah-aT. C-A-T. Cat”. I had a brief flash as I remembered the stages of development where I was starting to sound out words and how long it took for simple things like “See Dick Run. Run Dick Run.”
Even today, all these years later, I often judge myself as being a slow reader. I’ve met people that can sit down with a 300-page book and read it in a few hours. I’ve met people that can read a 300-page book in a few days. If I focus, and I’m loving it, I can get through a 300-page book in a few days. But it’s an act of attention. I can whiz through a harry potter book or ready player one. But sit an average novel in front of me and my mind will wander. I still have a book case full of books I can’t quite give up on, but know that I’m never going to read. They have bookmarks in them from 5-10 years ago gather dust and taunting me with their unread, yet non-engaging pages.
Regardless of my penchant for unread tomes. This is more about my judgment of my tome reading speed. I see my daughter reading and realize while I don’t measure up to my fantasy of how fast I should read, I have in fact established a rather phenomenal speed and capability that was not an inborn ability. I had to learn to read and practice a lot to get to where I am today. Although I’m slow when I’m not engaged, you give me a good book and a few hours to myself and ‘shazam!’, I rise to the challenge.
Today I am already more than I think I am. Today I am still not all that I can be.
Today you are more than you think you are. Today you are not all that you can be.
You’ve come a long way, baby!
You’ve got a long way to go!
Embrace the challenge of the future and appreciate your past.
Namaste,
Kevin
