Do you have the “somedays”?
Someday I will be healthy…
Someday I will find my purpose…
Someday I will get my finances in order…
Someday I will reduce my stress…
Someday I will live happily ever after.
Much of the time we do this unconsciously. Days are just days, they come and go. We have thoughts of someday, but rarely connect that to today. Our happiness stays cozy in the future while we tend to the demands of today.
When I was in college, I studied abroad in Austria. As part of our program we took a trip through Germany and visited Neuschwanstein Castle. It is the real life castle that Disney designed Cinderella’s after. It is literally breathtaking. At 20 I saw my future in the same way. I thought life was like a fairy tale. You put in the preparation (school, finding a job, getting married, etc…) and then are rewarded with years of perfect bliss. Isn’t it gorgeous? I wanted to live in a picture as perfect as this one.
photo credit: joiseyshowaa via photopin cc
I thought life’s obstacles had a stopping point. Like Cinderella, if you could figure out how to get to the castle with the prince, everything would be great.
I was so naive.
My naiveté was painful. When life didn’t obey and obstacles continued to present themselves, I thought I had done something wrong. I wasn’t good enough, disciplined enough, positive enough. There must have been a secret formula to happily ever after that I needed to search, and search, and search for.
In the middle of that search (with resulting guilt and never feeling good enough), I was missing out on the great stuff right in front of me.
Margaret Bonanno said, “It is only possible to live happily ever after on a daily basis.”
There is no someday. Only today. Only right now.
If we keep waiting for the obstacles to disappear, we will never live happily ever after because life will always, always, always have challenges. The trick is to know that we are resilient and capable of handling whatever gets thrown at us with grace.
Accepting that life isn’t always easy allows the freedom of knowing that we don’t have to be perfect to live happily ever after. That’s a choice we can make each morning. We don’t need someday because we get a fresh start today.
Headed off to live happily ever after now…