The Brilliant Dance

I can’t remember what I thought my college years would look like, but I know that it wasn’t this. I’m not necessarily disappointed with the way things turned out, but at the same time, I know that if I was really content with the state of my life, I wouldn’t be constantly trying to analyze how I got here. I wouldn’t be constantly wondering where everything changed.

Everything changed. In high school I was ambitious. I wasn’t the best student, but I loved school because I loved who I was there. I was popular. I was a performer, a writer, a leader. I never really gave myself credit for any of that at the time. I always believed that it all just sort of came to me through my circumstances. It was easy to gain the trust and love of the people around me having thirteen years with them to do so. It was easy to step into the limelight knowing every face in the audience. It was comfortable and safe.

Which is ironically the reason I left my first choice of college. It was comfortable and safe. It was a continuation of the straight and narrow path I had grown so accustomed to, grown to love. I needed more. I needed my world to be bigger. I needed to see who I could become when I stepped outside of the bubbles I created for myself.

So here I am in the bigger world with each day of my life a bigger struggle. It’s not easy. It’s not comfortable and safe. It’s not a blissful life, but it’s mine, and because of that, I treasure it. I won’t ever really know what my life would be like if I’d made different choices. That seems to be my mantra, and I’m quite sure I’ve written about all of this before. Still, sometimes I just need to remind myself that this is all ok.

I am ok, because no matter what happens, no matter how much my life may feel impossible at times, I’m still living it. And so I look upon each morning as an accomplishment in itself, and each night as another success. Each day is a day I have faced, no matter how sad or lonely or difficult it may have been. I welcomed it with open arms. I entered it knowing that it will only be followed by more days, more joys and hardships. I cherished it for the gift that it was. Tomorrow I will do it all again.

I suppose what it comes down to, is that I live on hope. I wake up each morning with the hope that today will be a little brighter, that I will be a little better. I move into the future with the hope that it will be all that I dream. I follow my heart with the hope that it knows what I need. Perhaps that is all I need, that hope, that ability to revel in each day. I can’t remember what I thought my college years would look like, but I always knew that I’d travel my own path. I have. I am. We all are.

We are all moving through the days in our own way, seeing what we want to see, believing what we want to believe. We are all on our separate journeys, and yet, we all move together as one. We’re all on the same search for a life we can be proud of, no matter which path we choose to take. In the end, no matter what kinds of steps we choose, we are all dancing the same dance. And so we dance on and on and on, into the grand ballroom of life.