Stop Waiting
Oct 09, 2020
How much time is wasted focusing on the destination instead of the journey?
We'll never be satisfied by always wanting the next thing.
We'll miss so much along the way, including our joy.
If we keep waiting for Friday, our week is wasted... for summer, our year... for someone to fall in love with us, our singlehood.
Each day is special and we can only realize it if we are living in the moment. Focusing on each moment can help us practice gratitude so we start to see the good in our day-to-day lives.
Talking about getting older is a great example of how many of us waste precious time.
When I was 20 years old, I worked in my first hair salon. The owner was in her 30’s, pregnant with her second child, and about to buy her first home. My other co-workers were in their early twenties. The salon owner's good friend came in to get her hair done, and she looked at the 3 of us in our 20’s and asked her friend, “wouldn’t you give anything to go back to their age?”. The salon owner said “heck no!” She named a few reasons as to why she wouldn’t want to go back to her younger self and a few reasons why she was happy with her current stage in life. All of her reasons sounded great!
This made me think about my stage: there was so much to be happy about. I thought about my parents and then my grandparents. My grandparents were recently retired and enjoying their stage in life.
I walked away from that experience with the knowledge that every age has its advantages. Sure, we may see some disadvantages as well, but if you focus on the good parts, we will always be happy. But if we wish we were back in the carefree days of the 20’s, we will miss the amazingness of our 30’s. When we get to our 40’s and focus on ‘being old’, we will wish we were back in our 30’s, but we didn’t appreciate it when we had it. As we get older, we realize that the 40’s were young and amazing after all, as each stage is.
