Had to really work with that title to fit with "I" day for the blogging challenge. Figured today would would be as good a day as any to share more about how this blog came to receive its moniker.
In short, it's named as it is because life is just, well, trippy.
Specifically, I'm talking about things like contrast: having the experiences that help us know what we don't want -- with the attendant soul-searing that often accompanies those experiences -- before we truly come to know what we do want.
I've had a good bit of contrast through the years, and even though it still continues, I'm grateful to report that it's now happening with much greater ease than it once did. One thing that has made a huge difference in bringing more of that ease into all areas of my life is the prayer that I started saying within the past few years.
At some point, after yet another knocking on the proverbial noggin from something or other, I wondered if it all really had to be that hard. Yes, life is like a schoolhouse in many respects, but, I thought, does it have to be so dang hard to get the point of what we're here to learn?
So, my prayer became, "Gently yet certainly. Please." In other words, I absolutely do want to continue to learn, grow and become more of who I am here to be. But I don't need continual whack-with-a-2x4 type of experiences to come to understand. Gently yet certainly gets it accomplished for all concerned -- a win-win in corporate America speak.
A good friend of contrast is not being where I thought I'd be at this stage of my life. There's a humorous and poignant scene in the hit TNT show "The Closer" (which, unfortunately, is no longer pumping out new seasons). Kyra Sedgwick plays Brenda Leigh Johnson, the dynamic main character. On Brenda's 40th birthday, she sits in a bathroom stall at work and says, "This is not where I thought I'd be today."
That statement is obviously about more than just the literal spot she's in when she says it. Brenda's angst about turning 40 is clear, as is her pondering that her life has not necessarily gone in the direction that she thought it might.
I certainly didn't think I'd be looking into buying, living aboard and traveling the country in an RV at this age. In younger years, I thought for sure that, at this point, I'd be living a life that looked an awful lot like having a husband, a house, two kids, a dog and a cat in suburbia somewhere, happily teaching throughout the school year, traveling during breaks and writing books in the summer.
Let's just say that anytime I've wanted a really good laugh, I've made a plan for my life.
Those are just a couple of the ways life has been trippy looking out my windshield. How 'bout you?
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