Something I've been thinking a lot about lately is how things look in retrospect. Anything: relationships, friends, exams, races, clothing, decisions...
What seems acceptable, normal, and even a good idea almost always changes form when flipped on its belly and looked at from a different light - like say, the future. Don't you wish we could live life backwards?
Take, for instance, my Intro to Biostats exams. Prior to, and even during them, they were unsurpassable mountains. Huge. I had no idea how to get over them. I cried, gave up, sat in my chair confused, gave up, blanked, had moments of clarity, forgot again, gave up, blanked, doodled, walked out early with half my exam unfinished...you get the picture.
It was an uphill battle. And a class that's "introductory" suddenly became harder than my main classes in SAR.
But now, as I'm studying for my cumulative final and redoing my exams, I realized these exams aren't hard at all. And I'm flying through them. It's a little annoying knowing that if the information just clicked a little earlier I would have gotten 100s. I'm only about 3 months too late. How many times in life does this happen? Something I cried and panicked about just a couple months ago is now just another problem to be solved. No sweat. No tears.
And the same goes for a lot of things. Another example is my race season. It was the most miserable, terrible, daunting experience I've been through in college. It ripped me apart. I hated almost every moment - almost. I didn't want to be patient enough for it to naturally come back to me, which put even more pressure on me because I was trying to love something I just wasn't ready for. If I had known that by December I would be right back in the game, maybe I wouldn't have let it effect my entire semester and tear me apart like it did. Maybe I would have been okay with skipping practice and dragging through marathon training. Maybe I would have gotten back into it sooner.
Another big one in this is relationships. When in a relationship it's hard to see where it's going or where it will end up, or even the path to how you get there. People are impossible to predict - they can go from your greatest friend to your worst enemy over night. This happens every day. It leaves you wondering what happened and how you even got to that point. And most of the time it's unexplainable - there's no start to where or when this separation started to happened. But what you thought was good for you at one time may not be good for you now - even if you don't realize it at first.
It's impossible stay in the same pot as some one who's planting their roots somewhere else, and the more two people grow up, the more room there is for growing apart. But it doesn't matter where or when you move pots- what matters is how you create your garden.
What seems acceptable, normal, and even a good idea almost always changes form when flipped on its belly and looked at from a different light - like say, the future. Don't you wish we could live life backwards?
Take, for instance, my Intro to Biostats exams. Prior to, and even during them, they were unsurpassable mountains. Huge. I had no idea how to get over them. I cried, gave up, sat in my chair confused, gave up, blanked, had moments of clarity, forgot again, gave up, blanked, doodled, walked out early with half my exam unfinished...you get the picture.
It was an uphill battle. And a class that's "introductory" suddenly became harder than my main classes in SAR.
But now, as I'm studying for my cumulative final and redoing my exams, I realized these exams aren't hard at all. And I'm flying through them. It's a little annoying knowing that if the information just clicked a little earlier I would have gotten 100s. I'm only about 3 months too late. How many times in life does this happen? Something I cried and panicked about just a couple months ago is now just another problem to be solved. No sweat. No tears.
And the same goes for a lot of things. Another example is my race season. It was the most miserable, terrible, daunting experience I've been through in college. It ripped me apart. I hated almost every moment - almost. I didn't want to be patient enough for it to naturally come back to me, which put even more pressure on me because I was trying to love something I just wasn't ready for. If I had known that by December I would be right back in the game, maybe I wouldn't have let it effect my entire semester and tear me apart like it did. Maybe I would have been okay with skipping practice and dragging through marathon training. Maybe I would have gotten back into it sooner.
Another big one in this is relationships. When in a relationship it's hard to see where it's going or where it will end up, or even the path to how you get there. People are impossible to predict - they can go from your greatest friend to your worst enemy over night. This happens every day. It leaves you wondering what happened and how you even got to that point. And most of the time it's unexplainable - there's no start to where or when this separation started to happened. But what you thought was good for you at one time may not be good for you now - even if you don't realize it at first.
It's impossible stay in the same pot as some one who's planting their roots somewhere else, and the more two people grow up, the more room there is for growing apart. But it doesn't matter where or when you move pots- what matters is how you create your garden.
The biggest lesson to be learned from all this is when to let things go and naturally take their course...and when to tie a knot at the end of your rope and hang on for dear life.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is it's okay to let things go. It's okay to let people go. It's okay to grow apart. It's okay to make a sharp right turn off your path and hack down a couple weeds to make a new one. It's okay to close chapters, or even books. It's okay to put things in boxes under your bed and forget about them. It's okay to replace pictures on your wall. It's okay to say 'no more' to things that no longer make you happy. And it's more than okay to know that one day, you'll look at this and smile, because what seemed like a brick wall then, would now just a little hurdle to hop over and smile at....and it's even okay to do a little victory dance.
Love love love,
Katie
Love love love,
Katie
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