That’s when you start
Isolated, or independent? Triumphant or terrified? You get to choose!
Public domain photo by Julia Caesar, shared via Pexels
“…when you realize that the story of your life could be told a thousand different ways, that you could tell it over and over as a tragedy, but you choose to call it an epic, that’s when you start to learn what celebration is.” — Shauna Niequist
Let me guess: your life is fantastic, a journey you never expected and wouldn’t have chosen, but one you will never regret.
Or maybe your life is a boring slog through endless tasks you don’t love. Maybe you spend a lot of time wishing things were different somehow. Perhaps other people were blessed with gifts denied to you, and you feel trapped by circumstances that keep you from being all the things you once dreamed of being.
The really amazing thing is, most all the people I know well (including me) could point to certain facts about our lives that would support either viewpoint. Some choose the first way of seeing life, and others choose the second, but most of us vacillate between the two. Depending on how our day has gone and how we are feeling and a thousand other tiny and seemingly irrelevant details, we could be tossed back and forth between conflicting perspectives, afraid to be happy but determined not to be sad.
In an epic, things don’t always go well for the protagonist. In fact, things usually get downright dicey. But that’s an inescapable part of the narrative. A story about an endless vacation would get pretty boring, wouldn’t it?
When we celebrate something or someone, we honor the totality of what created that particular event or person. We focus on the beauty that emerges from the complex details. We feel not only gratitude, but a deep appreciation of the many layers of meaning underlying our observation.
Your life is an epic. Really! And you are its star. I wish you the faith, strength and determination to navigate all the twists and turns, and celebrate a happy ending.
This post was first published seven years ago today. The original post, comments and photo are linked, along with two other related posts, below. These links to related posts, and their thumbnail photos, do not appear in the blog feed; they are only visible when viewing the individual posts by clicking on each one. I have no idea why, nor do I know how they choose the related posts. That’s just the way WordPress does things.
- Posted in: Uncategorized
- Tagged: adventure, attitude, celebration, challenge, choices, determination, happy endings, life, story, viewpoint
Defeat Despair 
Good morning, Julia!
“A story of endless vacation ….” Hmmm.
Welcome to “Happily Ever After!”
Yes, I vacillate.
Currently, I’m having trouble sleeping because I just conceived of some fun new renovations for my basement and I’m so excited to see progress that I woke up at 4 this morning and haven’t been able to get back to sleep! Last night I installed some hardwood flooring onto a wall that will become shelves in my new sewing room, and now I’m scheming how to renovate the closet area to include back-up lighting for seeing the junction box when something trips a circuit.
Ahhh, the stuff from which “happily ever afters” are made….
“She was obliviously indulging in her happily ever after, when suddenly ….”
(To be continued?)
OK, so I’m late enough getting to these comments that by now, you might be able to give us a project update. Happy Ending? Or Muddled Middle? or Temporary Timeout? In any case, I hope you’re sleeping more soundly. That’s something I’m doing better at lately than at any time in my life so far, and it does work wonder to get adequate rest. “Adequate” in my case (and probably many others) being more hours nightly than I once thought I needed. That has been one positive thing to come out of my injury 8 months ago.
My current goal is to get the window-side of the room “done enough” to be operational as my sewing room through Christmas, as I have many Christmas gifts I’d like to make, inspired by the tablet bag I purchased in the Kazakhstan pavilion at the Expo in Dubai earlier this year.
Wow – “earlier this year!” So much has happened since then, including your injury eight months ago. And I still haven’t been to visit you, although I’m on my way to visit my mom again next week…..
I guess I’m still in a “to be continued” mode!
Yes, life itself seems to be in a “to be continued” mode most of the time. And that’s a good thing, right? Although longevity is a blessing we can’t count on, I do think that always having something to hope for and work toward does help us live longer…and more importantly, happier!