Get Up

There are many things I’ve learned over the past couple of years, some big and some small – but one of the more precious little gems that I’ve picked up is that life moves on whether you’re ready to or not; and that you might as well just move on with it because, if you take too much time, you’re going to be running to catch up.

So when things don’t turn out the way you planned, when you make mistakes, stumble, or even fall flat on your face, you have to get up.

You have to find whatever little bit of fire you still have inside – and, yes, it’s always there, even if it all seems like smoldering ashes – and you have to find ways to magnify it until you can start to see your way out.

You have to get up.

And if you do, eventually you’ll get to a point where you realize that plans are just that. They’re just plans. They’re figments of an imagination. They’re illusory constructs built on the flimsy foundations of time and expectation.

If you do, eventually you’ll find that it’s not your mistakes, or even your successes, that define you. It’s the space between.

It’s what you do with them, how you dance in the rain, how you see in the darkness. It’s how you weather the storm. It’s whether you sing your gratefulness or beg for more; it’s whether you share the treasures you collect along the way or hoard them for fear of another fall.

So get up get up.

Get up – because if you don’t, if you wait, if you linger in the past, cling to a plan best left on the wayside, then that space in between is lost.

Get up, because life moves on whether you’re ready to or not.

© 2019 Cristen