A new journey (Tara Taylor Quinn)

Do you ever wonder where you're going? I don't mean, like, when you're trying to get to an appointment and are lost, but, rather, on the less pragmatic journey of life. Do you sometimes look at the road behind you (the past, memories, relationships you've created) and the road in front of you (plans, hopes, relationships that you're living) and feel completely lost? Do you ever wonder how you got where you are? And look at the future with confusion?

Or is it just me?

I've got all these esoteric ideas, these thoughts and beliefs of life's potential and where I'm heading and what I want and sometimes reality hits and here I sit, in a pragmatic chair in a pragmatic room in a pragmatic life and I don't fit at all. That's me, today, sitting here trying to blog about fashion, or travel, or my dogs and nothing fits. I'm not a kid anymore, with my whole life stretching before me, with all the choices waiting to be made. I've made choices, built a life, driven a long distance on my road and it doesn't look familiar.

Well, wait a second, let me back up lest you all send the white coats through cyber space. I recognize my surroundings! I know my name and all of the people and places that make up my life. I'm just not finding the me I started out with. I've been thinking I'm forging my way and suddenly wonder if maybe I've merely been forged by others' ways.

The chair's a bit uncomfortable. Not necessarily all wrong, just not fitting quite right. Maybe I just need to lose a little weight. Or gain a little weight. Diet and exercise, isn't that what everyone always says are the miracle cures for everything in life? (Oh, wait, I travel around the country giving workshops on that very topic!) Oh, and chocolate. It heals all. At least for women. Maybe I just need to get some rest, or take a vacation.

Or maybe I need to be grateful for today, for this moment and my uncomfortable chair. Maybe most of the best things in life come when we're sitting in uncomfortable chairs - because they force us to look around for someplace more comfortable. Maybe today is the day to find me in those cubby holes I've squeezed myself into. The day to pry me out and shake me off and take a good look at what I've got. What I've forgotten. To dance if I want to. Just because I want to. Or to cry if I need to. Just because I need to. To blare Helen Reddy music or Neil Diamond or Led Zeppelin. Just because the music moves me. Today is the day to find my comfortable chair and to race toward it with both feet, to throw myself down, lay my hands down on the arms and hold on.

Because today is the day the journey takes a new turn - one designed and planned by me. A turn that is directed by my heart, by the inner being who is tired of being cramped in uncomfortable places. I worry a bit about what color the chair will be, what kind of fabric it will have. How hard will it be to keep clean and how long will it last? I worry that the seat might get worn, the cushion flattened. Worry that I might find myself sitting on a hard wooden frame. But then it ocurrs to me that even, so, if that wooden frame is mine, created by me, directed by my heart, I will still love it.

I will find comfort there. And glory in the trip I've taken.