Walking a path that, perhaps, was not the path for us – End of the Day for July 21, 2014

Sometime this afternoon, I looked up at the clock on the wall and said, ” I don’t remember the days going by this fast when I worked in an office.” Indeed, I don’t. It seemed that days would drag by as I performed one tedious task or another. As much as I liked parts of my past jobs, there were more parts that I loathed — and even wondered why they existed at all. Such is the nature of work, I guess. If you aren’t doing something that interests you, personally, in some fundamental way, it will seem boring and tedious.

Of course, some of what I was doing today was tedious, too, but there was some underlying reason for the performing the tasks that would, hopefully, result in some change, some improvement, some earning. These reasons can help you push through those difficult periods when things just simply MUST be done, whether you want to do them or not. Now, you wouldn’t want to spend your entire, career or life doing only these tasks, but if you can find that little grain of NEED in the task, you can get it over and done with. Then you can move on to something else.

At age 50, I often wonder if I waited far too long to finally have the time and space to do the work I am doing now. This is the first time in my life I have been able to truly focus on particular goals in my life without the constraints (well, fewer constraints) than I had earlier in life. There has been many times in my past when I was feeling I was progressing down a new, better road only to have my attentions diverted into more necessary, productive and “normal” activities. Each time this happened, I did what needed to be done, but I think I lost a little bit of myself — a piece, a peace, and energy which I will never get back. You can create the best world you can today, but I wonder sometimes if it can or will ever be as good as it could have been, had I started down the path earlier in life.

You’ll never know if this is the case. Nor will I. A quote of unknown origin comes mind. “Life can only lived forwards, but only understood backwards.” In many cases, I think this is deep cause of the regret we often feel in our lives. Somehow we feel that path that led us to this location is the path we should have followed. All we can do, though, is take the next fork in the road and do the best we can.

Previously on End of the Day: