The unexpected is expected
One thing that I am learning is that I can always expect things that I don’t expect. It is inevitable. The question is, “how am I able to respond when those occurrences arise?” It is very easy to get pulled into the consistent routine of life. To believe that every day is just going to be the same as the one before. That I’m going to do the same things this week as I did this week. Days, weeks, months can pass and nothing can feel different.
Until something does.
If something were to come up today that required two weeks of your time, or even a week of your time, how would you respond? Do you have that time? Do you have the capability of being there? How would life be if it were disrupted for two weeks or even more? We never really know what life has in store for us. The only thing that we are in control of is how we respond once we get there and how we prepare.
That is the lesson that I am taking away from this. Life isn’t just about how we respond to it. It’s how we prepare for it. This giant ball of dirt is always spinning and new things are happening in every moment. All we can do is be as ready as possible. I can avoid those things, act like they aren’t there, or just completely ignore them. But they are still there. They still exist. I can act like they aren’t going to happen, or avoid putting myself in situations where they will happen, and what blessings and opportunities am I robbing myself of by avoiding the hardships?
To live a great life means to experience some pain and hardship along the way. To share love with someone means to eventually lose that love in one way or another. To work hard for something means hard work, short term failure, rejection, hardship. To avoid all of those difficulties means to avoid living to our greatest capabilities.
What would life look like if it were led with more intention? Focused on being prepared for whatever the universe had in store. A life being led with vision and purpose. A level of readiness that allows for the bumps that will eventually come to all of us. So many in the realm of finance suggest an emergency fund, it’s a very practical suggestion. Yet the world that we live in does not promote such a practice. Buy more, spend more, travel more, credit cards. We are told that talking about money is taboo, and yet it’s the one thing that we all struggle with. Time is the main resource that we will never get back, and there are millions of things fighting for it every second of the day.
The interesting aspect of priorities, much like any choice really, is that they can always change. Something that is important now may not be so important a year from now. Finding those larger priorities and working toward them now changes everything. Then we are focused on the possibilities of tomorrow and what it will take to get there. Even if the vision changes along the way, moving in some direction will get us a lot closer to it than staying at the starting line. Being prepared for something will always be better than just living for whatever is right in front of us.
