Life’s an adventure and I am here to enjoy the journey
- Kyle Snyder: Live on Purpose
- August 2, 2019
- 1083
“The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.” — Oprah Winfrey.
I am the type of person who likes structure and to have a routine. Yes, I admit it: I like to have some sense of being in control of my life. I want to know the outcome well in advance. Now that is not always realistic.
Life throws us curve balls and punches, much more than what we want. I tend to look at that as being bad, and some of them might be, but so often I look back and laugh because I know if I didn’t have them happen in my life, I wouldn’t be the way I am today.
About five years ago I was talking to two women I hadn’t seen in a while. I ran into them in German Village on a Saturday morning. While I was talking to my two friends, along came another friend of theirs I had met before but didn’t know well. I said hi to her, and all four of us began talking. Somewhere in the conversation, it turned to my column.
Their friend who I didn’t really know said her friend just loves my column. I thought, “Oh, that’s nice.” Then she asked about me meeting her, and I jumped at the chance. No wait, that is not what happened.
I said no to meeting her, but after I left, I felt the Holy Spirit telling me to meet her. Long story short, after a while I gave in and met her. We fell in love, and on Sept. 21 we are getting married.
I for one am glad I changed my mind. See what I mean? It is the unexpected things in life that bring us the most joy. I have always loved the Mark Twain quote, “20 years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from a safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
That to me best sums up what it is all about, going in to the great unknown and seeing what God has in store for us.
Life can’t always be planned out the way we want it to be. Sometimes we have to just roll with the punches. People who can roll with the punches are, in my view, much happier about their life.
I was talking with a friend of mine. He said he learned how to laugh at himself. He added that his life got a whole lot easier when he started to laugh at himself. I must confess I am learning to laugh at myself when I do something stupid, but I still need a lot of work.
Nothing in this life is perfect, and we should not try to force things to fit in our little perfect box. Let things play out on their own. Know that we don’t have to force every little thing to go our way. We are not in control; God is. We must give God everything we have and start laughing at ourselves.
Mistakes are a part of life. Embrace them by laughing at them. Next time you make a mistake, before you get mad, stop and think how you got there. There might be a really dumb mistake you can look back on, say boy that was kind of dumb of me and just laugh about it. See, life doesn’t have to be so serious. We need to laugh at ourselves.
Example: Right now as I am writing this, I was going to write something else, but I can’t remember what I was going to write. I am just laughing about it in my head. Must not be that important or I would remember it.
Oh wait. It came back to me now. No, there it goes again. You see? That probably made you or somebody else laugh at my expense. I know it made me laugh. Lighten up a bit and embrace that life is an adventure. Laugh at yourself every now and then. You will feel better.