Sometimes it’s really hard to step back and look at the big picture. I mean, we’re all so busy with tasks, aren’t we? We take care of the things in front of us. If we were in a forest we would be watching each individual tree to make it through the forest. We wouldn’t look past the trees to the other side. We wouldn’t look into all of the trees to determine a path. We really can’t do that, can we? We can’t see all the way through a forest. We have to make our way one tree at a time.
But in doing that, we miss the experience of the forest. I have recently started walking up at the lake. There are paths through the woods that are there for pleasure. They don’t take you anywhere. They are there to experience and for you to move and that’s all there is about them. They are in a beautiful setting but when you decide to trek over them for movement’s sake, you don’t pay any attention to what you are passing. There are times when I walk these that I proclaim that I am going to come back with my camera and I am going to take the time to see all that there is to see. But the next time there I make the same proclamation. And yet I have not done that. I watch the trees go by, because by watching the trees I know that I am that much closer to the 3 mile marker or 6 mile marker or 11 mile marker that I am trying to accomplish.
And so it is with life. People will tell you that it’s the journey that’s important, not the destination. But usually by the time we get to the destination we are so worn out we can’t even remember the journey. And it’s with the journey that we are able to become the people we are supposed to be. Isn’t it sad that the journey goes by so fast because we are so afraid that we will never get there?
I look back on the important times in my life. I couldn’t wait to be a teenager. I couldn’t wait to get out of high school. I couldn’t wait for my life to start, so I quit college. Oh, in between that my father died. I didn’t get a chance to really get to know him. I didn’t get a chance to be the person he wanted me to be. I was too busy being in a hurry. And then I was married. I so wanted to be married. Of course, no one told me of the problems being married caused. And then I couldn’t wait to become a mother. When infertility put a halt to that I didn’t stop to take a breath and look to see where I was in my life. I had to fix this, and I had to fix this now. So for five years I concentrated on having a baby. I didn’t work on my marriage. I didn’t work on my career. I only worked on having a baby. And then when the baby came I didn’t just sit and enjoy him. That’s when I decided I had to work on my career because I wasn’t really happy. How could I be? I hadn’t taken the time to enjoy one minute of my adult life. And somewhere in there my mother died. The woman who had been my heart and soul for so many years was no more and I didn’t even realize how bad this was for my life because I had more to do, faster. I decided that I had to have another child because that made Mom & Daddy happy, didn’t it? But I had another baby and I was so much more miserable. The baby didn’t make me miserable but I couldn’t enjoy her. I couldn’t enjoy one minute of that pregnancy because I couldn’t wait for that baby to make my life so much better. And then I got divorced and then I had to be a single mother. None of that worked so I left town and started over as a virgin somewhere else. Well, at some point in time I made up my mind that I had to be happy. And I made up my mind that I had to enjoy all that I had, because I really did have it all. I always did. I just had to take a breath long enough to realize what I did have.
Every event, every task, every obstacle was a tree in the forest of my life. And if I had only breathed through my life I would have seen that there were some bushes that were scratching my arms and legs. And there was some kudzu out there that was making it impossible to move forward. It was at that time that I needed to regroup and look for alternate routes around the kudzu. If I wasn’t going at full speed I wouldn’t have fallen down that muddy slope, I wouldn’t have had to jump across that little stream that looked like a river. If I had stopped for a minute I would have realized that every tree was a part of who I was and all made up the life I was making for myself and for my children.
They say that youth is wasted on the young. But I believe that you have to go through life to realize just how good you had it. And if you’re smart enough, soon enough, then you are able to enjoy what you have a lot sooner in your life. It took me about 25 years to get there. And just like the trees in the forest I have a lot of rings around me, I lose my leaves a little sooner every year. There are times that I droop. But I now know what storms to prepare myself for and which ones I just let pass me by.
So even though I was an active participant in this forest of my life, in retrospect I am able to take some of my roots and pass those around to those in my life who need a little nudge here and there. I am able to spread my leaves so those that need it can see through the trees to see the forest that is out there. The tasks matter. The day to day matters. But none of those matter as much as the big picture. Take a minute every now and then to take a breath and see what’s out there. The forest will matter a lot more to you then.