Zoom Out

I am so grateful.  I just returned from a two week, beautiful trip with my mother and brother to another country where we explored, met local people, heard important stories, learned important lessons and made new memories together.

We spent a lot of time on this trip learning about the history of the area.  Some of the things we learned about - the people, the situations, the significance of places, the choices people made - happened literally more than a century ago.  The more I learned, the more the stories and people seemed familiar to me.  Though I've never met these people or been in this place before, it was easy to make connections between what these people experienced and what we experience today.  To be human (a fully alive human) is to navigate age-old quests.  For love, for curiosity, for "abundance", for "power" and "influence".  To protect oneself and those they love.  To seek and grow; to be challenged and overcome obstacles.  We have gone through these processes for hundreds of years.  So it's nothing new, though it feels very new and real and consequential to us in real time - and it is of course.  BUT, in learning about this cycle of humanity and evolution, it allowed me to zoom out and realize that although we are all pretty special, it all isn't THAT big of a deal.  In all likelihood, the thing I'm obsessing over today will truly not matter soon.  It definitely won't matter in the next hundred years or century.  And yet it matters to me, now.  

So what to do?  Do you care more or less, given that perspective?  My answer for now is that you continue to care, but keep that zoom out perspective in mind, too.  That you don't need to care SO much that it doesn't serve you.  That your story, while important, is not the only one.  That you have something to contribute, and you should; but also, where you can, go easy on yourself a little.  Living in anxiety and fear never really helped anyone.  

There are a lot of great things I gleaned from the trip that I'm going to really try and Remember and hold on to.  Just think about it, as you're reading this right now, there is someone on the other side of the world going to bed or waking up.  Eating breakfast or having a glass of wine.  This is a big, beautiful world we live in.  It's easy to get stuck in our little world; our day-to-day; our people and challenges.  But I really do think that if we zoom out every now and again and give ourselves that extra perspective, we can Remind ourselves that this, too, shall pass.  

And in the meantime, soak it in!  We only get a little moment to enjoy this life - so DO THAT!  Enjoy it.  Be grateful.  Sponge it up.  Grow and explore and be curious and maximize this opportunity! We really don't know when it'll be someone else's turn next.