Stop Waiting for Life

I got my permit several years ago, as a nineteen- or twenty-year-old (really, those years seem light ages away now, thanks to everything that’s happened since…). Of course, that wasn’t my idea. My parents signed me up for the classes, knowing otherwise I’d never take the plunge, because I never do unless someone shoves me off the diving-board. (I really need a full-time ‘shover,’ y’all.) And since I wasn’t crazy about driving (it calls for lashings of confidence and I don’t have even a smidgen of the feeling), after I got my license I promptly quit driving for the next two or three years.

Until this summer, where I finally grew clearheaded and realized 1. it was silly; 2. it was problematic; and 3. unless I hurried up and relearned now, I’d have to relearn at a much less desirable time and in a very undesirable place. So I decided when we moved I’d start driving there.

Except we didn’t move. So I waited. And waited…

Something I have a tendency to do is to wait for the most desirable/“perfect” time to do things. It’s been a crippling issue of mine all my life, but it’s glaringly obvious now as an adult. And this year, God’s been working hard to get it through to me that sometimes (maybe most times…) it’s better to do things now than wait for an illusive perfect time.

I stumbled across this some time ago and it accurately summed the lesson up:

All those days that came and went,
little did I know that they were life.

Stig Johansson

I was waiting for “real” life to start. For a season more quiet. For a time more convenient. For a better routine, more inspiring surroundings, stronger understanding.

But I’ve realized that I won’t get any of those unless I work towards getting them. Such things are gained progressively through trial and error, not by waiting.

Life is not some magical period I will enter into in one, five, ten years if I wait long enough. Instead, I’ll wake up and realize life began all that long time ago and I wasted it doing nothing.

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A post shared by Kelly Diane (@itskellydiane)

So I started living. I started building my business and actually am on track to launch it soon. I had conversations and started tutoring. I started writing again. I started doing the things I wanted to do, the things I had to do to create the life I wanna live. I realized that never doing anything that might hurt isn’t going to protect me. If I try and fail, I’ll lose; but if I never try and never get what I aimed for, I’ll be just as empty-handed. If I try, at least I get the experience to try again, better, and catch something in the end. And sometimes that calls for risks and pain points, like making phone calls to people I can’t understand well, or writing newsletters when I have no idea what I’m doing, or almost crashing my grandparents’ new car relearning how to navigate curves. But through those, I’m learning. Phone calls aren’t as bad as I made out to myself. I’ll learn how to write newsletters if I keep pressing through and doing them. And I will slow down in curves now.

I may be waiting for some things I can’t control to happen, but in the waiting, I can’t put everything on hold. I’m living life as it is right now, so that if and when my dreams come true, I can look back on happy, useful days or years.

Stop chasing life. Life is right now. Stop waiting for the future. The future is now.

Stop waiting for Friday, for summer, for someone to fall in love with you, for life. Happiness is achieved when you stop waiting for it and make the most of the moment you are in now!

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