It’s hard to believe that this time last year, I was homeless and on the cusp of undergoing probably one of the most brutal chapters of my life. And that’s really saying something, because I haven’t had a comfortable life by societal standards.
I say it was a cusp, but really, my life had been slowly and silently unraveling for the year and a half prior.
Hozier once sang, “I will not be great, but I’m grateful to get through.”
And that resonates with me because what I went through doesn’t make me great. There is no greatness in suffering; it isn’t admirable or glorious.
There is no participation trophy.
That is an illusion society hands us when things get uncomfortable.
But there is something pretty great about pulling yourself back together and paving the way for gratitude in everything you do and everyone you meet. To be grateful for the chance to experience life at all, to come back from something you weren’t sure you’d make it through.
Everything has so much more gravity to me.
Every smile, every tear, every cup of coffee. Something I’ve enjoyed every morning for the better part of the last decade, and yet, I still get to experience its warmth, its smell, its taste. The way the cup feels in my hand.
At night, when I see the moon and the stars, I’m reminded of the souls I’ve experienced loss with and how they exist in another dimension now.
Every shared interaction with another living creature.
Every time I see the sun come up and the sun go down, I’m reminded to be grateful for change and for the in-between spaces of the day.
The way light reflects off street signs. The smell of chlorine in the air along a strip of hotels in a tourist town. Even the small talk in an elevator full of strangers I’ll never see again.
Hozier went on to sing, “Darling, there’s a part of me, I’m afraid, will always be trapped within an abstract of a moment of my life.”
I’ll let you sit with that one.
At 30, I gained a certain experiential wisdom as I watched my life collapse at my feet, no matter how desperately I had tried to prevent it. No matter how hard I tried to control it, or cling to something or someone, every door I desperately ran toward slammed in my face until I had no choice but to stand in the hallway.
Now, at 31, I feel reborn to the world. Younger. More filled with wonder. I have more questions than answers, and for that reason, I ask:
Does the numeric value of age even matter in the grand scheme of living?
The number tells us how many years we’ve been alive, but not how many we’ve chosen to live.
And I don’t mean just living for the extremes, I mean really enjoying your presence here.
The coffee cools. The sun sets. The elevator doors open. The strangers leave. The moment passes.
The hallway was never just a place where every door shut. It was also a place where I stopped running long enough to notice where I was.
Perhaps when you stop measuring your life solely by what you have survived, you don’t turn back the clock. You change your relationship with time itself.
Leave a Reply