It’s been more than six years since I first uttered the words, “There are some big changes coming…I can feel it”
In the years and months and days – and now even in the minutes since that moment, every syllable of it has been proven to be true.
Sure, the world as a whole is an entirely different place than it was that scant six years ago, but that wasn’t exactly the way I felt it. I felt the eminent change on a much more personal, singular level. And it wasted no time in getting itself started.
I saw the beginning and the end of the healthiest, thinnest and most athletic time of my life.
And then I saw the end of my running life…and how I was just as unhealthy in practice as I ever was healthy in results.
I saw the climax and untimely end of twenty years of loyal service as a Manager of Labor Relations. I found myself – for the first time in thirty-five years – voluntarily without a job and without any prospects. No where to go.
It was at that point that I began to understand how much each of these events was more of a classroom than a hindrance to me. My own personal classroom.
And I had so much yet to learn.
And that learning would carry on ever since, and indeed grinds on now.
And then, from an old injury, degenerative arthritis and my own ignorance, my hips locked up solid. So they were both replaced inside of two months.
Every minute of every day, before, during and after the surgeries and throughout all of my recovery time was all one, big scattered, steaming pile of lessons to be learned.
I began to tell myself, “I guess I needed to learn that” and I went on to the next lesson.
And after all of that stuff, I’ve been waking up feeling a little better each day.
Some lessons were horrendously difficult, but then again, all change is difficult and lessons teach me nothing if I can’t feel the results. There were days that I couldn’t move from shock and sadness and feeling so helpless and lost…feeling as though there was no reason behind it.
And I would wonder ‘why’, but then squash the thought just as fast, telling myself, “There’s something you’re missing. There’s something here you’re supposed to learn.”
And so I went on learning all that I could find.
My writing has given up its fair share of hardships and lessons, but nothing was ever insurmountable and every bit of it was absolutely necessary. I have to admit, though, this part has been some of the most fun to navigate.
To be perfectly honest, I really do feel as though the clock has gone backwards in time in my mind while leaving my body where it’s at in the present. In some respects, I truly feel as though I’ve been offered a second chance – BUT – only if I have learned the lessons at hand. I’m really not trying to sound mystical, but I guess I’ve always had that inclination, so…there you go.
In some ways, I feel like that kid striking out on his own for the first time.
More often than not, I’m looking at things through a child’s eyes – not a crotchety old man’s – in particular at every new adventure that floats my way.
In the past couple years alone I’ve done more than I ever thought or believed I could or would.
And now, looking forward into this next great adventure, it’s beginning all over again.
I already know that I do not know and I know that I have many lessons yet to learn.
Some will be refreshers taught in a different light to teach me a more varied way of thinking.
Some will be more difficult than I would expect I would ever want or need, but so far it turns out that I do need each and every one of them. Each and every one of them.
And now, in the present day, I can not only feel the changes coming, I can see how necessary all of those lessons were and how much they had to happen for me to get to this point, right here, right now…and how much more they have to happen for me to move on in that blessed forward motion.
And now, my newest – and I’m sure my most trying – adventure is already started!
There are some big changes coming…some of the greatest, strangest and most prolific times of my life are still ahead of me…I can feel it.
Yes, I can still feel that change drifting around here, just swirling and prodding me and nudging me to take on that next lesson. And I will.
I have a much healthier outlook nowadays…that was one of my first lessons.
Well taught and well learned.
Can you just imagine what I’m going to learn tomorrow?
These are some great days we’re living, and I have so much more to learn...
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