The Stage is Set

When I was in my early twenties, I wanted to be at the end.  The end of my story.  I was overwhelmed.  Afraid.  Terrified, even.  I didn’t see this exciting chapter as an adventure full of potential.  I saw it as a field of landmines.  No road signs.  Barbed wire.  One wrong misstep and I would blow my whole life.  I just wanted to be  past all of the choices.  I wanted to look at all of those decisions through my rear view mirror.  Serenely.  With wisdom and peace.  I wanted the big decisions to already be made, magically decided with magic zero effort pixie dust, and fine outcomes.  Not perfect, mind you.  I’ve always know that life isn’t perfect.  But I wanted to skip the mess and go straight on to the aged wisdom.  Twenty years later.  I didn’t get pixie dust.  Instead I made choices.  Hard ones.  Easy ones.  Some of them made themselves, for better or worse.  There are still huge decisions now that I’m forty and no longer twenty.  There are still no real road signs.  Or, too many road signs, depending on how you look at it.  I’m still the same me.  Still stumbling.  Still occasionally getting tangled in the barbed wire. If anything, now the stakes are even higher, because I am no longer the only player.  But i’m no longer terrified of my own life.  I know that there are great works ahead of me.  The stage is set, the lights are dimming.  I am in a constant state of butterflies in my stomach, yes.  Butterflies.  Excitement.  Sometimes the nervous giggles, even.  And I let myself feel it.  The uncertainty and the wild spontaneity of a life lived.  In the moment.  This moment.  This spark of joy.  Now.  Big moments on the stage are coming…  Yes.  They’re coming.  But I am learning that the little moments between the big scenes bring their own kind of joy.  Their own unique sweetness.  These are the moments that I want to sink into with my whole heart.  Soak them up through my skin.  Breathe them into my lungs with full, great, slow breaths.  Stay there with those moments until they are part of me, never to leave.  The quiet, in-between joys of an ordinary life.