Appreciating who you are cannot be done in the time it takes you to read this post. I have included in these posts (and the book) some of the key things I have discovered in my life to date. This is the result of my age, having lived in three different countries and my experience of three career paths including the study of psychology, sociology and counselling. So it is an accumulation of my experience so far and undoubtedly part of my life’s journey.
What has your life journey been like so far and have you begun to make sense of it? Is it all ahead of you or all behind you? How does that affect your day-to-day choices? For me I am grateful to my past and hopeful about my future whilst feeling that my current opportunities are good enough. It is up to me to make the best of what is available to me rather than focusing on what is imperfect. (Imperfection is part of the human condition and provides us all with opportunities to be vulnerable). I certainly feel that I am now on my individual life journey even though I don’t know what happens next. Do you have a sense of having a past, present and future?
The sense of life being a journey can help us gain perspective. If we use the metaphor of travel then we can appreciate that sometimes we will like the scenery and other times we really want to get out of town. Some paths are easy to walk through and others require us to accept assistance. We may see others on our journey who appear to be having an easier or more difficult time. Making comparisons can be a distraction to keeping on our own path. We may feel we are running a marathon or a short sprint, doing hurdles or mountain climbing! Henry David Thoreau says that ‘what lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.’
What opportunities do our journeys present for us and for those we meet? How do we cope with the difficulties and the privileges? What do we protect and what can we share with others we meet on the way? Maybe we can only appreciate a journey when we’ve got to the end and reflected on where we have been. It may be that we have time at the end to do this or it may be that others do that for us. It does not matter; our journey is ours and no one else’s.
How do you feel about your journey so far – share your thoughts
