Life is a highway….

And so it’s happening, I’m aging. I didn’t ask to age. No one checked with me to see if I wanted to grow up and get older. It seems only fair that someone at least ask my opinion.

I got an invite today to join a Yahoo group for our 20 year class reunion. Huh? What? No way. It hasn’t almost been twenty years. Surely someone didn’t pass math, because there’s no way that I’m almost 38 years old.

I thrash about my desk in search for the trusted calculator (I wasn’t a math major you see) and I tap in the numbers: 2007 minus 1987. Holy shit! It has been 20 years.

That got me thinking about my life. And more importantly about how I’m on the threshold of being unemployed – of being in that dimly lit room called broke.

“Twenty years ago, I never would have thought I’d be where I am now.

“My life sure hasn’t turned out the way I had imagined it would in high school sitting with my girlfriends ‘planning’ our lives.”

Wait, it hasn’t ‘turned out’ at all, it's been lived. Sure, there have been a few we’ll call them “inconvenient moments”, but those moments are few and far between. Instead my life has been a colorful journey of – well – life and experiences. Maybe its been a blessing in disguise that it didn’t “turn out” the way I planned from the mind of an 18 year old.

I started pondering those “inconvenient moments” and why were they so unwanted, or so “inconvenient”. We all experience “inconvenient moments” - you know those moments when you don’t know where you’re headed, or even who you are anymore. Your seemingly perfect, good life, is running along with everything as it should be. When suddenly…WHAM! You are “in between” everything. Jobs, relationships, houses and most importantly the person you were, and the person you are about to become. It’s a scary place to be. The world of the unknown. Black, dark, unfamiliar…and most of all insecure.

Growing up our parents, and our parents –parents (aka our grandparents) told us that security is what it’s all about. The Holy Grail. If you achieve nothing else in your life, be sure you have your security. Security is everywhere in our lives: national security, social security (though I’ll likely never see this), personal security, job security, financial security – the list goes on. You were sold that if you worked hard, saved $$ that you would be fine. Secure.

I don’t buy this anymore. I rather like the world of insecurity. Our lives are anything but tidy and predictable, so why try to make them fit into that mold. When it doesn’t fit into this mold we believe we are “unsuccessful” or a “failure”. Being “comfortable” clearly stunts our growth.

Every time I’m forced (usually kicking and screaming) to face a change, I grow just a little bit. Though I rarely see it at the time, looking back, it wasn’t nearly as bad of a trip as I had anticipated it to be. And somehow I ended up a better person, a smarter person, a more “secure” person. Yet, if I had stayed in my comfort zone I might have lived with nothing to worry about, longed for nothing then I’d have no desire nor need to grow, or change, or invent something new in me. I can’t grow if I stay comfortable.

And frankly, it’s unlikely that I would knowingly and purposely move out from the sunshine of comfort into the black hole of the unknown, but I’m glad that I’ve been, in most cases, pushed out. And if I can see this as an opportunity to find joy, happiness, love then maybe, just maybe I will be just fine.