#9 Side Quests

So this series is supposed to be about side quests, and how important it can be to have a period of your life that doesn’t necessarily follow the main purpose of your life. A time that might feel like it’s completely off-track. I find this funny, because I feel like my last few posts have gotten off track. But such a time of side-adventuring would be easy to write off afterwards, or even regret as a mistake. I might, for example, say that spending almost two years in IT was a mistake because I’m going back into trade work. But I think there are huge lessons that we miss out on if we think like that. If we don’t look to see the bigger picture, we might miss out on a lot of things to be grateful for. Today I want to unpack some of those things.

This would be a great place to pop in a cliche about mistakes. I could throw in some quip like “we never truly fail, we just learn ways that don’t work!” But come on, do you really think I’m going to be that lazy? Absolutely not! My personal takeaway is that we neglect the growth and maturity that come with any season of life, mistake or not. What if the circumstances you wound up in weren’t a mistake, but the ingredients necessary to make the masterpiece you morphed into?

Think about that for a second. If you think about an egg, or milk, or those packets of yeast, would you really have guessed that they could turn into the fluffy stuff we call bread? Come on, y’all, that’s more than a little nutty! What if the way things turned out were supposed to happen to get you to grow? What if that decision you call a mistake was just enough push in the wrong direction for you to wake up? I don’t know about you, but sometimes I’m a little more motivated by the stick than the carrot. It sucks, but I am grateful for some of those bad, or even near-bad moments in my life. They have pushed me more than my good times ever have, and I’m grateful for them. 

And that’s just it: how many of our “bad” moments were completely without fruit? Can you truly say that dating that person brought you nothing of value? Even if you weren’t the greatest fit, maybe you learned what a bad fit feels like. Maybe you were able to see some things you need to work on, and some things you wouldn’t want to live with for the rest of your life. The problem we all have (myself included) is that we get hung up on the pain. Don’t worry, it’s completely normal, but you haven’t truly healed until you can see that everything has done at least some good for you. At the end of the day, we can always grow from everything in our lives. We just have to buckle down and overcome the pain inside of us. 

And that’s just it: everything can grow us and help us get wiser. I think it just takes time to really examine our decisions and why we made them. It may seem like a daunting task to get to know yourself, but if you take just a little bit of time, it starts to stack up after a while. If you look at your schedule, there are usually a few things that can be done away with. Normally, this would be the part where I remind you to get off of social media, and to stop doom scrolling, but we’ve heard that a million times before, let’s try something new, shall we? 

I think when we talk about journaling, it’s assumed that we need to take long chunks of time sitting around thinking deep thoughts about our lives. Folks, that’s simply not true. I have jotted down some of my best thoughts waiting in line at WalMart, in between calls at work, and while waiting for dinner to finish cooking. It doesn’t take forever, and we shouldn’t wait for long-winded sessions to start trying. Get a notepad set up on your phone and start jotting down your thoughts. And what you’ll find is that a deep insight doesn’t crop up out of nowhere, but starts from the shallow things you recognize easily. You might start a thought saying “I’m really sick of waiting in line. This lady in front of me is being a real pill! Wow, I’m really cranky today, aren’t I? I’m cranky like this all the time, aren’t I? Maybe I have been more stressed than I thought! Or maybe lines bug me because waiting makes me nervous because I feel like I don’t do enough.”

If that sounded corny, it’s because I made it up, but I think you get the point. Take those little observations and turn them into something deeper. Eventually, you will be able to take even your biggest “mistakes,” and see that they are growth opportunities. And before you know it, you will become a wise one. So wise, in fact, that I may even be able to consider you to contribute to my glorious insights here! (Just kidding, there can only be one lord of this castle!)

I pray you begin to see your mistakes in a different light, that you begin to realize that you haven’t been wasting time, just using it differently. I pray that your life be blessed, and your path run straight and true. 

Until next time

May Peace be your guide.