Free Fall

Sitting here, after a night of restless sleep, covered in crumbs from the fifty Oreos I just scarfed down, I realized something. I'm tired of dwelling on my past. I'm tired of making myself a prisoner in my own mind. Instead of moving on with my life, making new memories, and enjoying this brief flash that is life, I've been dwindling into oblivion. 


Sure, sometimes it's good to reflect on the past. I mean, the past is what brought us to where we are at this very moment. It has shaped and molded our every thought and action. The past is a part of us. However, it's not all of us. We are not our pasts. We are the present. We are the now. Do you like where you are in this moment? Can you accept who you are in this very instance? If not, change it. That first minute in which you began reading this, is now the past.


Why do we complain about our pasts and our situations instead of doing something to change them? I don't want to live a complacent life anymore. Instead of dwelling on lost love and missed opportunities, I want to focus on finding new love and creating new opportunities. These things wont come to us; we must actively seek the things we want in our lives. Furthermore, we need to seek the things that we honestly need in our lives at this moment.


I might want to win back a lost love, but maybe that's not what I need right now. I'm at a crucial, transitioning moment in my life's timeline. I don't have a lot right now. In fact, I pretty much have a blank slate. I wrecked my brand new car, cut ties with people who were dragging me down, finished earning my associates degree, and I don't have a job. I really don't have anything to my name at the moment, except for my name alone. But I see some beauty in this emptiness. There's infinite possibility in this nothingness.


Today, I have the chance to find a new car; and while I don't have one, I can appreciate what it means to have the freedom that a vehicle provides. I'm completely single, and I only have relationships with my true friends. Not the people you occasionally say hi to, the people who would lay their lives down for me. I have my associates degree now, and I know that I want to further my education. Not taking any classes this semester has shown me how deep my passion for knowledge is. I would complain endlessly about going to class, but now that I can't go, I miss it. So I'm applying to a bunch of universities and planning on working for my bachelors degree in the fall. Being 21, and unemployed makes me feel pretty worthless. I want to prove to my family and myself that I am independent. I want to start earning my own money, and being responsible for more things. In this moment, I have nothing. But in this moment, I'm also working towards everything. I'm laying the foundation for my future.   


It's like standing on the edge of a giant canyon, and the only move you can make is forward. Forward will feel like falling, but on the decent, you have time to build a safety net. Something to land on when you've finished the fall. I'm trying to build one of those cartoon-ish springs that will propel me up and over the canon altogether as soon as I land on it. I don't want to take this leap and land on my ass. I'm ready to start my life. My new life. The life I have always dreamed of. Full of adventure, new people, new places, new ideas, and a new me. 


We can't skip over all the muck that exists in the present and land in the future. But we can wipe off the sediment and rot of our pasts. We don't need more things weighing us down in this moment. 


This moment is your life. Make it worth living. 

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