You Can’t Take It With You

What are you waiting for?

I was talking to a friend about my life and how I was “taking everything one day at a time,” and how I couldn’t plan more things for the future because everything is so tenuous for me and how I basically think in terms of weeks, no further.

And it occurred to me how damn passive I’ve become in my own life. For how much I worked to get here, there’s still so much I’m waiting on. Even the phrase “taking things a day at a time” implies reaction. I … am not a fan.

Sometimes we have to be in this sort of spot. I am a case in point. And yet, there’s so much I’m hoping will happen thanks to other people, so much handing over of control. It’s unavoidable, like in my career, but I’m not talking about that. (Suzie, I’m happy to have you navigate for me. :bows down:)

Where do you draw the line? Where do you say, I’m done waiting, I’m going to go do something else? When do you look back on the emptiness where your goal should be and realize you missed the boat? What are you waiting for before you jump? What stars need to align before you go after your happiness, your dreams, before you test the waters of what could be? You can’t take anything with you, so all you have is what you have now. Is this what you want to carry forever? Is this what you need?

I find these questions difficult. I’m not sure what my dreams are anymore. Like I said, I can’t think further than a week or so in advance, so to imagine my life in a year makes me feel sick. I have no idea. It could be anything. I have certain things I want to do – continue to write and sell books, spend time with people I care about, but beyond that? Larger, life-goal aspirations? I do not know.

My therapist, who I had only so much time with, was careful to drill in to me that it’s okay not to know things and I need to learn to rest in that ambiguity. I am very good with ambiguity as a general rule, I feel we can’t know much of anything. But this drifting is new; it takes some getting used to.

And I don’t want to look back and think, I wasn’t carrying anything to begin with, let alone attempt to take it with me. I want to be active in my own life. I can take my days as they come, what they give me, or I can take them as they come by seizing them. The phrase can go either way, even if my default interpretation is passive.

That said, I will not be making a five-year plan anytime soon.