Monday, January 3, 2011

To my daughter...

Well, here it is!  2011 is here and I'm ready for it!  I might as well tell you my New Year's resolution so you can keep me honest... well, keep me on track is  more like it.   I will blog at least 10 times a month.        There you have it.  I typed it out loud and now that I've done that I better stick to my word.  Last year was the first time I completed a resolution.  I'm sure you are wondering what it was so I'm happy to report that I said I would not purchase paper towels all year.  It was hard, it wasn't convenient, it cause problems...but I did it!  YEAHHHH for me.  I have NOT purchased any paper towels for more than 367 days...making me the "non-paper-towel-purchaser" winner!  Enough about the new year.  Moving on to today's blog...
What Are You Afraid Of?
There are plenty of things I don't understand about "these crazy club kids these days"!  (Wow...I sound old.) This isn't going to be some crazy rant about "What's wrong with today's youth!"  On the contrary, I'd love to have the answer and embrace it.  On the  lighter side... Does Rihanna really want to know   "Can you get it up boy?"  Seriously?  I never wanted to ask a man that.  Never.  Not now, not ever!  Why in the world would you sing that? Oh, the humanity. 
The not so light side...for some reason, today's youth wants to know what they're going to do when they grow up.  Seriously.  They want to know.  They worry about it.  They question it.  They ponder it.  Here's my take on this.  If you know what you want to do, Do It!  If you don't know, Fake It!  When the big picture is taken, you can't tell the difference between those who know and those who don't.  What you can tell is this.  The people who are smiling look happy.  The one's that aren't, don't.  We have so many choices.  We have so many places to land. We have everything.  The difference is how we accept the choices. 
My daughter is having a hard time figuring all this out.  It's scary and it's not easy. I want to tell her that you will make choices that will be WRONG.  You will make choices that are RIGHT.  You will succeed and you will fail.  There is not one person on this planet that hasn't failed miserably at something and in the end, the happiest people are the ones that have failed but tried again.  The only person that gets your life report card is you.  And the awesome part is that you give yourself the grade.  You can fail classes, you can fail in relationships, you can fail big decisions, but you can get back up and brush yourself off and try again.  No one is really watching.  They are too busy worrying about their own report card.  No one, but your mother!  And the good news here is this...Your mother never thinks you've failed.  Your mother thinks you're the greatest thing in the whole wide world.  When you fail a class, she thinks the professor is an idiot.  When you fail in a relationship, she thinks your partner was always a dope.  When you make a bad decision, she thinks "oh good, that was something she needed to learn and now she has."  The thing is, our children are a reflection of us...only a much better "us". When people say that you are just like your mother or your father, your mother thinks this..."oh no she's not.  She's a million times better than me."  She's nice, prettier, sweeter, smarter, more well rounded, she's everything I wish I could be....if only I could do it again."  That's what we think.  That's what I think. 
If you aren't doing what you want.  Stop doing it and do something you do want.  I am 49 years old and I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up.  I do know this.  I'm not GREAT at anything.  I'm good at a lot of things and that's enough.  I "dabble" in this and that and I change my mind about what I should do all the time.  Some people are on a path and they never get off of it.  They seem so lucky because they know what they are doing.  They seem so together and it seems easy because they have this "thing" out there and if they stay on the path, they will get there.  I say "Great for them!"  But please remember this, when you are that single minded, you don't get to see all the pretty, wonderful and interesting things off the beaten path. You will not get the experience you gain getting off that path.  When they say "Find your passion and it will take you places you never knew existed." They don't tell you that it's gonna suck sometimes.  They don't tell you that you will make wrong choices.  They don't really tell you anything that you don't already know.   Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man that he didn't, didn't already have! The only thing is, you have to get out there and make those wrong decision and choices to turn around and make another one until you find you.  And if you do that, you will find that you will have laughed more and felt that warm inside feeling of love and you will want more from life and one day you'll wake up and see that you are "there".  It might not be where you thought "there" was but you'll know that you have tried and somehow, you got "there".  You have a life and it's a hot mess and sometimes, a hot mess is all we need!
Read Frost's, The Road Not Taken.  It's a lovely reminder that not all of us can go down the same road.  ...I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.  (just don't text while you're driving on that less traveled path.)

Let's make this a really Happy New Year my fellow readers!
Peace.

3 comments:

blake said...

I know one thing that you are really great at and that is making me laugh.

Rebecca Regnier said...

I loved this. I'm so glad we're best friends. Wait. Kathy doesn't read this does she?

Katlyn Lewis said...

This was truly inspirational! It is so great that you said all of this, even though you are not my mom it gave me the push I feel that I sometimes need. Thank you!!!!