Hello me. It’s me. Just checking in to remind us that it’s all ok, so calm down.
No trip to Mexico reminded me of that this time. Just a good ole-fashioned run-in with emotional rock bottom and the beginning of the ascent back up.
Have you ever seen a tractor pull? I really hadn’t, until recently. I asked a lot of questions during said event. Enough that most people stood up from their perch on the bleachers and moved far away from the four chatty blonde women. Especially the tall one asking all the questions. But I wanted to know how it works. You can’t appreciate something if you don’t know how it works.
But the point. The point is that a tractor can only pull so much weight. Just because of the kind of tractor it is. Its engine, its size, its age– components of its individual capacity– all determine how much weight it can pull and how far a tractor will go. And when it hits that limit, its wheels start to spin.
Life is like that too, and we’re all tractors in this little metaphor. H’Yut. We all have a limit and we all have the ability to hit it, and when we do, the only result is spin, no matter how hard you push the pedal and rev the engine. Limits change constantly. We grow, we’re challenged. We’re inspired, we’re tired. We’re given opportunity or we hit a stumbling block. The limits expand and retract throughout our lives.
But really, the other tractors in the pull have no effect on the winner or loser. The winning and the losing are all relative to common denominators, yes. Someone wins and someone loses, yes. But the biggest difference between the tractor pull and life is that in life, as an adult, the only person you are competing against is yourself. You win or lose relative to yourself. We’re all running our own race. And yes, sometimes our paths run parallel, or cross or even run headfirst into one another, but at the end of the day, no one is running the same path as you.
So we all must turn the mirror on ourselves and focus. The longer the mirror is facing outward, the more time is wasting. Turn it in and ask yourself:
What are my goals?
Why are those my goals?
How will I get there?
What must I do?
What mustn’t I do?
Who will help me get there?
Who stands in my way?
Do I stand in my own way… and how?
It starts with a lot of questions. But we better ask them now, because later seems like a far worse time to clear up the logistics when or if the intent is progress. Questions cause turmoil, yes. They can tear us up, for there are many questions in life that we may never know the answer to. But we still must ask them, to be sure that we are not making any assumptions.
These days, I’m asking a lot of questions. Who am I kidding, I’m always asking a lot of questions. But I have to. The spin of the wheels is just too exhausting. Anything to add to the list?
