Life Is What You Make Of It

I read this post recently and it really reminded me of something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Go read it and then come back. I’ll wait.

What my friend Graydancer points out so eloquently in his post is that life and our individual lives specifically is what we make of them. A few months ago I spent a very long afternoon at a bridal shower sitting with a few other women in my age range. As I listened to them talk about their lives or more correctly complain about them I came to realize how different I was from them.

One woman who had been divorced in the past few years was complaining to her friends that she didn’t know what she was going to do with herself now that her child was graduating from school. She explained that her all her friends and social events were wrapped around this child and at that point a light bulb went off in my head.

When I reached a point of extreme unhappiness in my life a couple of years ago I made changes. Not all of them were for the best and unfortunately I can't change that but more importantly is that I had reached a point in my life that I knew I needed to change it or I would go insane. (Which looking back now I actually did at one point)

As I sat listening to these women talk about their lives and all that they didn’t have in them I thought of my own. I thought of my life this past year that has had some great highs and also some great lows. I thought about some of the hardest choices I've had to make and the ones that I would be facing in the coming months.

But I also thought of all the joy and happiness in my life. Of the latest sleepover and brunch at Dacia’s home for wayward girls or an upcoming adventure with Tess and I thought about the amazing group of people I have in my life.

What Graydancer pointed out so clearly in his post is that it wasn’t luck that got me to where I am at this point in my life.

It was me.

It was me taking chances and getting out of my comfort zone. It was changing the person I was that didn’t bring me happiness. It was finding a community that I was happy in and making friends within it. It was taking the risk of rejection and in many ways letting myself be vulnerable.

And it was fucking hard work.

I do consider myself lucky at times that I have the life I do right now. The children I have and the friends and family I have. I say lucky because I know how easily that can change in a heartbeat and how blessed I am to have all that.

But if I sat home feeling sorry for myself or if I refused to climb out of bed on those days I thought it was just to damn difficult to do I would have none of it.

That old saying is very true. “Life is what you make of it.”

My life is still a work in progress and hopefully ones of these days I will get it right. But until then if there is something I want in life I know it is up to me to take the risk and work hard for it because overall in the end the results are pretty awesome.