Spirit Matters: A look back, a look ahead

One day you’re 21, moving out of your parents’ house and starting a life of your own.

Your entire life is ahead of you. You have dreams and aspirations, and maybe even a timeline of how you see your life unfolding.

But you really have no clue what lies ahead and just how different life will be from what you envision.

At first everything is new and, in many ways, you are seeing the world through the eyes of a young child as you notice what draws you in, what speaks to your soul, what leads you to the next point.

Sometimes you wonder how you got from Point A to Point B, but mostly you are just living each new experience as intentionally as you can.

The next day you’re 51, wondering how and to where those 30 years have dissipated.

You pick through your memories – people you’ve met, places you’ve been, things you’ve done, detours you’ve taken – looking for pieces that might give a little meaning to your life.

There have been good times, hard times, sad times, tragic times.

Somehow you managed to make it through all of those times, although occasionally you didn’t know how you could make it even one more day.

But you did.

And looking back, you can see that it often was during those times when you didn’t know how much more you could endure that your character grew the most.

You survived.

(You remember how in those early independent days Gloria Gaynor’s 1970s disco anthem “I Will Survive” was your favorite song to dance to at Thursday “Bad Music Night” at Rocky’s in downtown Normal).

It was during those times that your soul was forged in the fire, giving you the wisdom and experience you needed to be who you were meant to be, and not necessarily who you thought you would be when you were looking wide-eyed toward the future.

Now you know you are at a significant threshold in your life.

You can see how fast the past 30 years have gone, and with eyes toward the future, a little more seasoned than when you first started out, you think of how you want whatever time you have left to be an expression and fulfillment of the lessons you have learned so far.

You don’t want to live a shallow life. To you, that would be a fate almost worse than death.

You know that 30 years is a long time, and 30 years is nothing at all. You know that if you are lucky enough to live another 30 years, that you still have plenty to learn and plenty to unlearn.

You have learned that life is composed of various shades of gray – that hardly any situation is black-and-white, and exploring the mystery at the heart of life is much more of an adventure, much more interesting, than thinking you have all the answers anyway.

So with eyes toward what kind of legacy you want your “one wild and precious life” to leave, you gather your baggage filled with memories, lessons and life experiences and continue walking down the way to wisdom.

SPIRIT MATTERS is a weekly column by Jerrilyn Zavada Novak that examines experiences common to the human spirit. Contact her at jzblue33@yahoo.com.