Layering

As I reread my entirely unnecessary and rambling post from yesterday, I spotted the message within the excessive words. The hidden message was "Everything we learn and do with our lives prepares us for the next step".

Every job I have held, no matter how small, prepared me for the next. The fact that I often seemed to have another job on the side tells me that I was always searching and open to add another layer of experience and looking ways to become more of who I was.

There is nothing I enjoy more than being on the receiving end of a service provided by someone who is well suited for and enjoys the work they do.

A brief conversation with a server at a restaurant revealed why we were so impressed. He replied that he had tried a different line of work but he was told because he was service oriented, he should work in the customer service industry . Whoever planted that seed in his mind deserves a medal. Our server deserves a medal himself, for nurturing that advice. He heard it, pursued it and even if this position is simply a stepping stone to the career he is headed towards, he has found a job that currently honors who he is.

The hospital staff we came across throughout Mom's various hospital visits are a true testament to the hard working medical team who made Mom's visits easier to bear.

We spent a lot of that time in the ER, a place where you know the demands on the staff is high, the line of people waiting to be seen is long and there are limited resources. Yet every single time Mom was admitted and she made mention of others who were worse off and needed more immediate attention than her, she was assured and reassured that she needed medical attention just as much as anyone else. They would treat her with respect, speak to the person she was and proceed to give her their full attention. These were medical professionals who, from what we experienced, were in a job they were perfectly suited for. They were shining stars.

We came across an EMT extraordinaire, who came and checked in on us each time he made a return trip to the hospital with a new patient. I cannot see his face in my mind but I'll never forget his last comment, "It's the Big Bird family!" he made when he spotted all of us gowned up in bright yellow gowns as they took precautions over the "unknown cause" of Mom's stomach troubles (that minor, but unnecessary inconvenience resulted in the necessity of a private room for Mom which, in the end, was a true blessing). I can't imagine the type of person you need to be, to become an EMT. In my opinion, they are superstars. This particular one stands out in my memory but he was last, in a long line of an emergency responders who went above and beyond the call of duty.

My mind veers off in several directions as I replay scenarios in my mind.

When we walk with the current, it often takes us where we need to go even when the path feels like it is filled with unnecessary diversions.

I recently made the comment that I did indeed marry too young and if my life became a "choose your own adventure" storybook and I could go back and change one thing, I said I would choose not to marry at age seventeen. I barely spoke the words when I realized that would mean I would never have had my second son; the chances of relocating close to my roots would have been remote; I most likely would have never made the family connections I have made while researching our family history books; nor would I have been in the time and place I was, when my third child came to be.

I backtracked my thinking and quickly realized that the connective tissue that made my life exactly as it IS would not have happened if I didn't marry who and when I did. I was a shell of who I have become and without the challenges I faced, I fear for who I may not have evolved into being.

Life layers you with experiences. One layer of knowledge, experience, misguided thinking and errors of judgement teaches you what you need to know to take on the next lesson you need. If we take these lessons and lie one on top of the other, keeping what we need to know and paying that forward, we are on our way to living our best life.

My nephew, who has found a way to make a living by making people laugh, said it all when he commented that there was no such thing as a "bad show". Those were the shows that gave him some of the best material to work with. He takes a bad show and makes it better. That, in my humble opinion, is the definition of success. Taking what you are given, turning it around and utilizing it to make the next step as best as you can.

Perfection is a futile expectation but I suppose I will never stop aiming for it, knowing that aiming high will take me where I need to go. Making mistakes along the way is to be expected and necessary. If we attained perfection immediately, we wouldn't learn what we need to know to become better.

It is the mistakes, missteps, misguided decisions and diversions that has taught me everything I need to know, to be who I am. Who I am is always in need of improvement, new hopes, dreams and goals.

There is something that changes when one reaches the final semester of life. Fear of failing becomes a little more crippling because it is accompanied by the sense that there is not as much time to recover from a fall.

Fear of falling. Fear of failing. Fear of losing. It all equals a fear of living. This is where I seem to be hovering. I know I can't remain in this phase very long so I am trying to insulate myself with the knowledge and understanding that life has taught me everything I need to know to take another tentative step.

Take what you have and carry it forward with you, knowing it will take you where you need to go. Just like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, she had the power all along; she had to learn it for herself.

"If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own backyard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with! Is that right?" ~ Dorothy, "The Wizard of Oz"