Missed Opportunities

 

Photo by Heather Zabriskie on Unsplash

A friend sent me a link to one 'Engage episode' where Caroline Mutoko was talking about how she ran out of time. It kept me awake thinking how busy we are chasing the bag, status, and achieving goals that we lose opportunities to be with family and friends and share memories or just enjoy the present. We are just about to end the year and the rush is to achieve the goals for 2023. I also saw things from a different lens.  I thought that it is not just about how busy we are but how we imagine there is permanency in things, we are immortal and the ego makes us think we have everything figured out. It is also the fact that you carry baggage and burdens that are too heavy and you are waiting to fix them to start living. A missed opportunity. 

Life is for the living. Enjoy it now. If there is something I have learned from a friend of mine who calls me Senje is living in the moment. I am still learning and this has allowed me to love people and give my all because I have now. I have learned to laugh and cry and let it out. I have expressed my love for people as well as the hurt they bring. I am not immortal, I am just a human being. 

But some of us are full of ourselves, selfish, and arrogant, and life revolves around us, we call the shots, we command the spaces and the followers follow. What we do not understand is a missed opportunity to reflect on our thoughts, actions, and words, and in the process, we lose people that were probably meant to be in our lives longer. We miss opportunities to heal and deal with the root causes of our behaviors. 

Another missed opportunity comes from the baggage that we carry, some baggage we carry comes from our ancestors, our uncles and aunts do not talk so we cannot talk to our cousins and other stories. You were not part of the feud but you have inherited it. A missed opportunity to become family. Sad, how family no longer embraces each other. 

I have learned that our experiences will shape who we become but in my journey of healing and living life, I have learned that we cannot heal everything all at once. There are days you think you are done with something until a trigger sets in and you realize that you still need to visit the skeletons one more time. So, imagine if you were to wait to deal with all of your issues and trauma to begin living life, laughing? What if took 30 years? Would that mean you start living when you die? It is okay to heal but as you heal let it not be a missed opportunity to you living and giving the world the gift of you. We are all broken in our ways. The good thing is when you are intentional in your healing, you do not bleed on others. 

The year is coming to an end. I hope you can sit down and reflect and do things differently. I hope you pause and see the gift of now. I hope you slow down and rest, make that call, plan for coffee, forgive, go back to therapy, laugh, love, and live. I hope you realize that even as you figure out your life, you have now, to make memories, and take pictures. But most importantly do not miss an opportunity to be in touch with yourself and become. Be gracious to yourself. 

There will never be a perfect time, go for that holiday, tell that crush you like them and if it works it will be happily ever after, if it doesn't work therapy will help you heal, enjoy that comedy. Do not wait for a perfect time, go laugh, dance in the rain, and play like a child, walk out of that door, and let go of the stereotypes of who people think you should be. Do not miss opportunities as you wait for the perfect time because that time will never come. Treasure those moments.