Are you where you thought you would be in terms of achievement in life?
This was inspired by something I saw elsewhere... a 20 something year old saying how disappointed she was that she hadn't achieved anything important yet.. It made me wonder.. is our purpose to achieve something important? What happens if we don't?
A great achievement to me would be being a good example to my children. So far I've missed the boat on that one. They are taking care of me instead of the other way around.
Nowhere near. But then again, I have achieved some things that I never planned on....
I never got married, but I helped save a friends marriage. I never traveled around the world, but I helped a friend in another country get her masters degree.
Sometimes our best achievements are the ones we didn't plan for.
Where I thought I would be when? Ai what point in my life? Mostly when I was young I just wanted to have a good time and feel good about myself. Later I wanted to become financially independent. Considering that as an adolescent I could see no place for myself in the world and that those were my only goals I haven't done badly at all. Oh and I wanted a good husband which took me longer to "achieve" but really I just got myself together and worked along being myself and everything else just sort of came. Now I can even afford to purchase some nice things and help people less fortunate than I have been.
I’m far beyond what my expectations would have been, even 20 years ago.
Growing up in mirthless, empty houses, watching my drunken parents struggle and fight because of how broke and stupid and shiftless they were, it would have seemed unfathomable to me then that I could live these last 40 years the way that I have.
I had some very big shoes to fill which I did not. Then again, given the traumatic childhood I had, I did pretty well. My predecessors with the big shoes had a lot of privileges that I did not. Odds are they could not have done what I did in my circumstances.
Element 99 