Have you ever caught your reflection in a passing car or store window? Have you ever gotten lost in thought and wondered how you got where you stand today and think back to those pivotal moments you’re sure changed the course of events in your life? Yeah, me too. It’s crazy to think how quickly we made those choices in the heat of the moment and how big they impacted our lives and I often wonder why I’ve ended up here, am I doing this right? I spent a lot of time micro managing what I did that I forgot to stop and breathe, stop and realize we are exactly where we’re supposed to be at this moment. Sometimes years later we can look back and see why a friendship ended or why we were laid off from a job, because those things ending made room in our lives for bigger and better things.

Too often human beings spend so much of their time banging on closed doors, or weeping outside of them, that they lose the ability to see the colors on the road ahead and life becomes gray. In that gray corridor we tend to lose ourselves in a flurry of “what ifs” and “why me’s” and as hard as it is to do, we have to shut those little voices of doubt down. It isn’t easy, in fact the hardest thing we as human beings have to do is learn to mourn the loss of someone who is still alive, without loosing ourselves in the process. We have to make peace with the fact that everyone we love may not be for us and in the ever revolving sphere that is life, people sometimes go and do not return, and that is okay. When you catch sight of yourself in a store window, instead of noticing what’s missing, I challenge you to notice what’s gained.

Instead of looking down, look up and count the good, instead of saying something has taken you too long to finish credit yourself for finishing at all. Everyone’s clock is different, your 25 is not the same as your moms, your siblings or your best friend’s and to compare and contrast the lives and progress of totally different human beings is counter productive. Count things on a scale that makes sense to your life, you cannot weigh grains of rice on a scale meant to weigh an elephant. Understand that time moves at a pace that is right for you and nobody can tell you that it’s taking you too long to reach a goal or heal a wound, it is your life and as long as you’re trying, you’re progressing.