It’s funny how much the passing of time can change the perception of what you want. When I was in college, working my full time job and also helping Mama with her catering business, I couldn’t wait to finish school. I’d been encouraged to go to college for as long as I could remember. I planned to become an attorney and make all the money. I pursued a degree in Political Science to prepare me for a career in law and order. But at the end of my degree program, I realized that it wasn’t what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to move away from home to go to law school.
But I had my life plan! I wanted to get married, have a nice car, have a nice house, and have something to be proud of. At that point in my youth, I thought that the true display of accomplishment were the things I could accumulate. I had no idea that life had other plans for me.
I couldn’t find a decent job after graduating college. I took a job almost making less than my part time job in college. I felt defeated. But I continued on the path of trying to find that idea I had in my head of success. I went back to graduate school while working full time and raising a baby. By this point in my life, success was a foreign concept. I’d gotten married, had a baby, yet had to move back home. I just couldn’t make it work and I felt such shame. I was a college graduate who supposedly had it all figured out but I was living at home with my parents.
What I didn’t know at the time was that my sweet Daddy was going to be diagnosed with terminal cancer. The time that we spent there was time for my youngest to get to know his PaPaw much better than he would have if we lived elsewhere. It allowed me to spend my dads last days close by his side. I could not have dreamed that one of the most embarrassing moments of my life would be God’s blessing in disguise. But now…now I wouldn’t take anything in the world for that time.
The years have passed on by with some of the dreams of my youth coming to pass, and some not. But what I have come to understand and embrace is that having money and things isn’t where it’s at. It’s the relationships with others. It’s enjoying the ordinary. It’s reveling in the little things like the way the sun peeps over the pecan trees in the morning or the way the waves lap the shore. It’s breathing in the fertile air of life and loving with all your heart, even at the risk of it breaking. It’s finding peace in solitude after chaos. The things I always thought I wanted don’t seem so appealing anymore.
What matters to me now is happiness. And whether or not I want to hear it, happiness is an inside job. My happiness wholeheartedly depends on me. It isn’t up to anyone else on earth to make me happy nor is my happiness dampened by the haters. If I am truly secure in my journey to find peace, love, and happiness…well, it’s on me. I can’t buy it in a store or find it from a friend. But I can do more of the things that make me happy. And I don’t mean the temporary kind of happy you find in a girls night out or a shopping spree.
I can write more and feel a sense of accomplishment for finally investing in my dreams. I can spend more time surrounded by those who truly love and care about me. I can pause each day to invest in my peace through meditation and prayers. I can live more purposefully so that the time I have left on this earth is filled with the kind of things that will leave my permanent impression.
I’ve been going through some things lately. It’s through this hardest time of my life that I have realized who I am and what I want in this life, more clearly than ever before. The dreams of my youth that were filled with things have now been replaced with something more valuable. Money is great to pay the bills but I don’t rely on it to bring me comfort. My peace is priceless, my happiness can’t be bought, and my love is as valuable as diamonds. Peace, love, and happiness. I sound like a true hippie but it sounds pretty perfect to me.
Messpot Diaries 