Tonight, I had a particularly rough commute home to where I grew up in NJ and somehow it managed to turn into quite the metaphor for life along the way and I couldn’t resist going home and immediately telling all of you about it! So bare with me, this how the night began, I was heading home to my parents’ house because one of my girlfriends from high school is getting married tomorrow. I took the not so lovely NJ transit and the bus driver decided to end his route about a town away from where I grew up. Nope, didn’t get on the wrong bus, got on the same bus I always get on to go home but NJ Transit sucks major balls, pardon my language. Thank god I’m a New Yorker now! Anyway, he drops me off at this bus stop and tells me to just wait there and eventually another bus will come and take me through the rest of the route and get me home. Now, I know NJ Transit and that bus could not come for another hour OR WORSE. Sometimes they just don’t even run! It’s a total crap shoot. It was already dark, I’m not in a well lit area and I have three bags and a back pack that weighs a ton and has my most valuable possession, this laptop, in. I stood there for about ten minutes, seeing if there was another bus close behind, called two friends before my phone died and then I made an executive decision.
I decided to just start walking. Standing there and waiting for a bus to come and just hoping it will, it’s just not my style! I need to be constantly moving forward. I need to take action, and although the road ahead might not be pretty or easy for that matter. It does lead to my final destination and I’m sure as hell more likely to get there faster if I start walking towards it that if I wait for someone to come pick me up and bring me there.
So as I was walking down this dark, scary road, with cars blasting down one side of me and creepy bug noises coming out of the forest on the other side of me, I just kept my focus ahead of me and kept my mind occupied along my journey. At some point along the way it actually occurred to me the possible higher significance of all this and then it suddenly all made sense!
In life, so many times we land at a crossroads, where we can make one of two choices, we can sit where we are and wait for something to happen to us, for that bus to come and take us home at some undetermined future time or we can make the choice to start off in the direction of what we want. We can start taking baby steps down the path that might not be so easy or so pretty but down the path we know will lead to where we ultimately want to end up. Whether it’s in your relationships, your career or your health. Don’t wait for prince charming to trip over the dog your walking one day and realize your the love of his life! You have to get out there, you have to go on blind dates, let your married friends set you up with people, maybe even, GASP, try online dating. Come on, don’t wait for that bus! If it’s in your career, are you waiting for someone to discover your art one day while your plugging away at your desk job? Or are you waiting till someone gives you a million dollars or you marry rich to start your business? PLEASE. You have to take steps, even if they’re tiny, every day to work towards your goals. Even the people who became successful off something as silly as American Idol had to go put themselves out there enough to let that success happen to them! No ones searching for the next American Idol in the cubicles at some office building, buddy. How about your health? Oh, don’t even get me started on this one! You know the kind of buses that happen to your health? They’re called heart attacks, diabetes, and other serious conditions caused by a toxic body. Nothing good ever comes from “waiting” to start moving towards a healthy, fit body, let me tell you. People find out they have a disease or have a heart attack and then turn their life around and start eating healthy and getting in shape, and I applaud them, I do. I am so blessed to have never had to experience that in my life but what if NO ONE ever had to?! Seriously! If we all start walking down the road to health right now, maybe none of us will get metaphorically hit with that kind of bus.
I’m home now, safe, showered and proud of my journey. I have made that walk for health, for sanity, even for my love life and I’m walking down that path for my career every single day, and there is no other place I’d rather be walking. I hope I can inspire you to start walking with me, whether it’s for your love life, your job or your body, how about we all stop waiting for things to happen to us and go start happening to things? If you know what your goal is and the direction you want to go is, start walking today and I promise if you don’t turn back, you’ll surely get there.
