Now It All Makes Sense

Did you ever wonder why you do the things you do, say the things you say, and think the things you think? As a therapist, I help clients figure that stuff out every day. It’s a lot harder when it comes to yourself. I had a friend recently tell me that she is “finally comfortable in my own skin”. I wish I could say that about myself. There are some things that I can’t contribute to my childhood. There are things that I can’t blame on past relationships. There are things I can’t pass off as genetics. Yesterday, the simple act of watching a bright pink flip-flop float over the rapids of Jordan Creek gave me a stroke of insight. An epiphany.

I think I wrote before about how I like watching things float downstream. I was walking about as fast as the flip-flop was going. I was able to figure out, approximately, when it would enter the Lehigh River. I also had a good guess about when the flip-flop would enter the Delaware River and eventually Delaware Bay. The adventures it would have along the way made me think of the word potential. That was my insight! I love potential.

That made some things clearer to me. It explains why I can get tears in my eyes listening to a middle school orchestra. I think about the potential of each of those kids. It became clearer to me why my favorite genre of book or movie is “coming of age”. I love to read about, or watch, a teen become an adult. The challenge they faced sets them up for their next fifty or more years. Lastly, it explains my love of nostalgia. It’s why I am drawn to the places of my childhood. It’s why I write about Slatington and my high school days. It’s because it was then that I had potential. A life to live, things to experience, careers to choose, and relationships to create.

I’ll be seventy in about two months. I’m struggling with that. I’ve been wondering why, because turning 30, 40, 50, and 60 wasn’t all that bad. But that bright pink flip-flop explains it all. It’s about potential. I am entering my last decades of life. Potential is pretty much gone. I know I can still have a lot of good experiences. But my life is not ahead of me. It’s mostly behind me. My “coming of age” is over fifty years ago. I’d best make the best of these last years.

That is what we should all be doing. Make the best of each and every day. Every single hour is a gift.