I have a friend who has a “journey” in all she does. All bad things that happen are a journey. All good things are a journey. All funny moments are a journey. When she’s hungry, it’s a journey. Tired? Journey. Angry? Journey. Happy? Journey. Every single day is a journey.
What if life wasn’t a journey and life was just life. What if on a day when things go sideways and my little girl is sick, my little man has an anxiety attack, I burn the muffins and forget to put the dog in her crate so she ate the loaf of bread on the counter and my husband is mad at me because I forgot, once again, to do what he’s asked me to repeatedly do, and now we have no bread for to make school lunch sandwiches so I have to send my kids to school with <gasp> fruit and crackers and no sandwich. What if that’s not a journey?
What if that’s just a shitty day that I don’t need to learn anything from. What if that’s just a day where at the end of the day I put my head on my pillow and think “Thank f**k that’s over.” I learned nothing here. I’m starting new tomorrow.
I don’t want to be on a journey every day. I don’t want every moment to mean something or be more than what it was. A moment in my life. Sure, I’ll look back on this life of mine and hopefully I think “what a ride!”. I simply don’t want to be exhausted from the journey and all the reflecting on the journey that is every single day for so many people.
I want to live and be in the moment. I want to get frustrated at myself because I’m forgetful and that’s who I am and eventually it just becomes a funny part of who I am. It’s not a journey for me, it’s just a funny, albeit somewhat annoying, part of who I am. I don’t want to learn from that. I want to put it aside and know tomorrow I’ll probably make the same mistake again and be totally okay with that.
I want my kids to know that mistakes are going to happen and yes, you should learn from them, but it doesn’t need to be a journey every single time. Every mistake doesn’t need to be analyzed and imprinted in our minds as “oh…when I did this, I had this journey and it made me who I am today”. Don’t want to share your toy? No journey needed, just a quick convo about kindness and perhaps it’s okay to not share everything. Forgot your umbrella? You get wet. Don’t want to wear your jacket when I tell you to? You get cold. Make me ask you to put your shoes on 5 times? Mama is going to lose her noodle. Don’t want lettuce because it’s green? No cookie. No journey. Just life.
I’m saving my journeys for the heavy moments in my life. The moments when I really do have to sit back, evaluate and figure out who I am or what I’m doing. But the smaller moments…my day to day living moments, the moments that fill my life…those moments are going to be just that. Living. Life.