Life Happens

Having now fished my brains out and completed my first week at Petsmart as well as having a lot of other things come up and beg for decisions, I'm looking ahead...or was until just now. It's funny sometimes how things will simply hit you without having been conscious of actually thinking about them. Psychologists and neurologists tell us that our brains are always processing things, even when we're not aware. Well, I suppose that's what happened.

I grew up in O'Fallon Missouri, went to school to be an engineer, became a photographer and ended up an archaeologist; I then went to seminary and ended up a fisherman. Now I'm a manager at Petsmart where I worked long ago while I was changing from an engineer to an archaeologist via photography. I have spent the last 9 years or so planning for and dreaming about the future, to secure it, to get to it and to love it. Now completely on the other side of all that preparation...I'm still preparing. I think I'll always be preparing for the future; we all are. There are some things, though, that cannot wait.

"Life", for example, does not wait. Life happens without our pre-approval, without our permission. There is not a single one of us who is waiting for our life, regardless of how well, how responsibly, how diligently we prepare for it. Preparing for the future works because we're already connected to it, and that connection means "life" has no boundaries...just rises and falls, turns and swoops, stops and starts. So, as I go out with my wife tonight, I can freely and honestly enjoy it because it is not made meaningful by any future she and I plan--it's made meaningful because it's my life, our life. Ultimately, life doesn't need my permission, just my attendance.