I had a routine doctor’s appointment today, which ended up being a long conversation with my brilliant doctor about what an absolute bitch life is.
We started off with the usual check-up questions and then I got right into whining about how I think I “have arrived” and yet I don’t feel like I “have arrived”.
What I mean is that all my early thirties milestones have been reached (good job, nice car, living in foreign country, travel extensively, etc) but I still feel like I am schlepping through life. I don’t feel like I have arrived at my happy ending and I have yet to burst out in song in a field of flowers.
So my question today was “how long am I going to have to keep at it before I arrive“? Haven’t I done enough work? Where the eff is my happy ending???
The answer was wise and blunt. You don’t ever really arrive, eventually you will just die.
Life is a struggle. It has some amazingly beautiful aspects, but overall it is a battle that you win by continuing to put one foot in front of the other. Every day. Even the boring ones.
If you have reached a point where you feel like you can stop, take a breath and give thanks for your blessings, then you have arrived.
* Hurray!!! *
But you need to say those blessings fast because the next train is coming down the track and this one could be carrying heart disease or ovarian cancer, and the long slow march of survival must continue.
As depressing as this pep-talk sounds, it actually gave me a great deal of heart. Things will change. You will never get stuck in one place too long, even if that place is the most comfortable place you could ever imagine. There are better places for you. They may not have room service and cute towel boys, but they will have life lessons that you REALLY need to learn.
We are all on this long schlep and we are all hoping that the happy ending is just over this next hill. Maybe the happy ending was that breath you just took, or that wink you just exchanged with a stranger. Maybe if I start treating every mundane day like it is my happy ending, like there is nowhere else in the world I would rather be, I might even squeeze one or two unauthorized happy endings from this bitchy old universe after all.
much more muchier 
Sounds like you could use a mix up. You should come visit me! (I say you should visit me because I couldn’t afford to visit you and I have no vacation. So San Antonio isn’t a destination of choice for jet setters but wouldn’t be too bad, huh?)
Yes my little munchkin. Grow where you are planted. You know what they say, happiness is an inside job. While much aggravates me, big picture I am contented and therefore happy. Do what you do with love and grace and truly treat each day as tho it may be your last………We all end up in the same place so focus on enjoying the journey, even the mundane because without the bland, you have nothing to compare the spectacular to!
I’ve often wondered myself, too. Sometimes I think you gotta let yourself (make yourself) feel the happy ending. It’s hard when we spend our whole lives gunning for the things we’re after – and then when we finally find them we think “Ok! What to do next??” because the only thing we’ve ever known is not ‘feeling satisfied with ourselves and what we have’. What we’ve known is all this ‘gunning for the things we’re after.’
I wonder if that makes any sense..? lol. Just a thought. n_n
I found that room service and cute towel boys are overrated when you feel ungrounded. It seems like the universe never lets me sit for very long in my comfort zone. I seem to get a couple of weeks, tops, before something shakes it up. But at times the shakeup occurs within the mundane, if that makes any sense. After living on the road for five years without a home base, mundane became exotic, and it’s an appreciation I’ve never lost. You are right where you are supposed to be.