Today Is the Day

Good morning, friends. Wherever you are in the world today, whether it be 2:00a.m. or 7:00 or 9:00 at night, I wish a good day on you all *waves wand*

This is, to date, my fourth attempt at blogging over the past two months. I think I reached the point where I was getting out of my blog exactly what I put into it, and neither of those levels were where I ever wanted to be.
  So, I stepped back. Tried to learn how to blog again. Over the past weeks I have been voraciously reading my favourite writers on the Internet (some of whom inspired me to create this blog in the first place) and trying to figure out what went wrong. Ultimately, the issue was just what I said above. I was hoping that the little effort I put in would result in a satisfying outcome.

Guys, when does that ever work?

I was watching an interview a couple weeks ago with the lead of the band Switchfoot, and the interviewer asked him if he thought the band would be different without one of the band members. I was gearing myself up for a typical "Of course! We couldn't be the band we are today without ___!", but Jon doesn't really give typical answers, so he responded that yes, the band would look drastically different, because everything in our lives bears significance and everything will impact us in some way and change who we are as people.
  I was grateful for that answer. Because I think so much of the time I am content to let the little things fly past or fall down without giving them a second thought. But really, who would you be if you hadn't lived the life you have up to this point?

This is really cliche, but bear with me for a second. What if you hadn't read the books you did as a kid? What if you never saw that car accident that changed the happy Utopian view you had of the world? What if you never liked that boy, never had that meaningful conversation with your best friend in the wee hours of the morning? What if your hair was brown instead of black? What if you have gone your whole life up to this point thinking that you don't like avocados when really, you would find them quite good if given a chance? Guys, it's not the major events in life that change us. It is simply Life itself, and when I forget that I have to pull back and remember who I want to be, not just who I am. Who I am is always changing, and will continue to change until my body is rotting in the ground one day. But who I will be - though the outworking of that might start looking a little different as I grow and adapt more - will always be there. It will never be too late for me to get back up and finish the race. I may not become my ideal in a sudden burst of magic lightening, but I can always make progress. And some days I find that I am who my seven-year-old self wanted to be, and I hope that my twenty-something self will be able to say the same about present-tense me.

So this leads me to my title. Today is the day, right? I can't tell you how much I hate that saying. It always made life sound so easy, like it was sitting right there, waiting for you to grab the wheel and start driving to your perfectly-mapped-with-break-stops-along-the-way destination.
In truth, life is not an easy thing. And my twenty-something self will look back on my life now and laugh that I thought I knew something. But it's true. Life is hard. Countless have said it before me, countless will say it after me, and I have a sneaking suspicion that I will add a few of my own complaints to the pile before this blink-of-an-eye life is complete. So while I'm at this whole being honest business, let me state another truth:
You cannot turn your life around in a day. Ingrained habits do not die easily, and you may find that the past two weeks of Internet surfing have done you more harm than you could have realized. But the reverse is true too. I may wake up one morning and find that a month of building calluses on my fingertips has paid off, that my guitar playing - though not good - is better.

Life is not all about the destination. Life is not all about the destination. Life is about the journey, because every decision you make will have some sort of impact on what your final outcome is, and every decision you don't make will be made for you. Don't let anyone tell you that what you do now won't matter then, because just as sure as the air I'm breathing, you will be irreparably changed by it. Remember that. Every action you do matters. Every breath you take, every thought you think changes the universe forever. There's a weight in that, but also a tremendous glory! So don't ever think that the end justifies the means, because we're not God, we don't see how every minuscule deed changes the face of this planet eternally.
  So, I guess, the person I want to be now is not a perfect person. I don't even know if she's a good one. But I do know that I will always aspire to be the woman who considers carefully, who lives life with her eyes open, who sees a lot of ugliness because she is always searching for the beauty in the world. And I know that this dream, at least, is not unattainable, because every step I take now lends to the mountain I will have climbed then. It's only a matter of choosing your mountain.


~Margaret