I believe in riding the waves
Throughout my whole life I’ve heard people say that “Life is too short to worry about small things.” That really never meant much to me until last summer when everything changed.
I was sitting in my room starring out the window, dwelling on all of the things that I didn’t have in life. Thoughts of being dissatisfied with my life were swarming in my head like bees around hive, when I noticed an older woman on a power wheel chair closing in on our recycled cans outside; it was garbage day. But what was her purpose for such an action.
At first I was really curious about what she was doing. I thought it was really odd and thought that it was actually funny. Then I realized what she was doing. She was collecting the cans so that she could earn some money. A quick rush of guilt filled my body. I was sitting pouting about things that couldn’t be changed and didn’t really matter when there was an older woman just trying to get by off our recyclables. I made the decision right there and then to change my way of thinking.
So many new thoughts were racing through my head, it was an incredible feeling. It was almost I was changing inside at that very moment. I thought to myself “No one possesses everything in life that is true, but we are unique and are all different” and so that being true I felt special, I realized who I was inside. This realization brought to me some powerful questions that I needed to ask myself. Why was I wasting my time just sitting here when I could be living life to the fullest, riding those waves of life so to speak? Also what could I do to change this situation? I began to analyze my whole life. I came to a certain conclusion; I had spent so much time caught up in things that I couldn’t change that I never really thought of what I had.
How could I change this? What would I do with this new knowledge? It took time to change my way of thinking and still have trouble with my new view on life but I started to enjoy more moments in life, even those simple ones at home just sitting around. I began to notice a change in how I felt, I was so much more happy and satisfied with my life.
Doesn’t it seem so much easier to find a problem in life rather than a solution? Better yet people spend too much time worrying about things they can’t change that they miss on what really is going on. Persevering through life is not an easy feat. But I find it easier when I look to others for words of guidance. I found a special quote that I now live by. It was said by a man named Johann Wolfgang von Goethe “He only earns his freedom and his life who takes them every day by storm.” This I do believe.
To me life is like a wave, you can do one of two things with it. You can flow along with it, ride it or you can go against it and sink. I prefer to ride those waves everyday as much as I can.