**Warning: this is a serious post filled with a lot of not-very-serious High School Musical jokes/references.**
I was watching High School Musical the other day (yes, I'm twenty and yes, I still watch that movie). It got to the part where Gabriela wanders the empty halls of East high and sings her heart-wrenching song in front of Troy's blown-up sports poster face. Know which part I'm talking about? Cool, we can be friends. Have no idea what I'm talking about? See below:
Anyway, after the song is sung Troy and Gabriela part ways for approximately six minutes and eighty-four seconds of the movie. And I skipped it. I'm not sure why. Yes, I've seen the movie before so I've already gone through the agony of wondering whether they'll be able to work, work, work this out. we'll make things right, the sun will shine...oops, that's the second movie, but man, doesn't everything just lead back to High School Musical?
So I know they get back together, but what, I couldn't wait six minutes and eighty-four seconds for it to happen? Then this got me thinking about things that have absolutely nothing to High School Musical and I zoned out for the rest of the movie, lost deep in thought.
We can't go back in time, but we can't speed it up either. We can remember the past, and hope and dream for the future, but I think there is a limited amount of remembering and dreaming we can do before we start to lose grip on reality and forget that we have a life to live...and it is right now.
Maybe I'm the only one dealing with this and the rest of ya'll just have it all together, but I do this a lot, mostly dreaming. The thing about my little day dreams is that I filter out all the bad stuff. I know exactly what to do and say in every situation in my head.
Then I get all excited. Oh my gosh, it's gonna be so much more fun when __________. Man, it's gonna be so great when _________ happens. I'm so excited for __________to be different. Whatever it is, it's going to be so much better that what I'm doing right now.
Then tomorrow comes, and the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and pretty soon it's a week, month, year, later and nothing has changed. And I find myself thinking
How can that be??? I imagined this point in my life so much better than it actually is!! I feel normal, just like I did before...what is going on? This isn't how it's supposed to be.
And it's all because I was trying to skip the "bad" parts. I find myself watching these movies and I can't even make it through the whole thing without skipping the "boring" moments. If I'm so impatient to get through a two hour movie to the happy ending that I can't even watch the whole thing, how am I going to make it through life?
There's a great scene in Letters to Juliet where the grandma is looking for an old love and they pull into the driveway of an incredible mansion sitting on a lot of beautifully manicured gardens. Her grandson says "you got to skip the messy bits" and she replies
"Life is the messy bits."
So in movies, we almost always know that they'll get past the messy bits and have a happy ending. It's pretty clear. But in life, it's not always so cut and dry.
I sit wishing and wanting and waiting away the "messy bits" until...what?
Marriage? then kids? then money? then kids leaving? then travel? then retirement? then, then, then. But I've realized that life doesn't have a culminating moment. Where we've finally figured it all out. Where we don't have anymore question or problems. Where now that I've checked off this, this, and this, I'm good. Because if we keep a list that says "I'll be happy when..." we'll always have some box that remains unchecked.
While some might find this news a little sad, I find this sudden revelation freeing. I don't have to sit around waiting until certain things have happened before I can be happy and at peace. In the rare moments when I just sit and appreciate what I have and where I am right now, I realize that I've got it pretty dang good, and I've got every reason and right to be happy where I am now.
Not because I can skip the "messy bits," but because I can always find two sides to my story. It's like a spinach and strawberry smoothie that gets blended up into one off-colored, delicious life drink. We can choose whether we focus on the icky brown color we see, or we can choose to savor the taste of the strawberries. Either way, they are blended together and we can't separate them. And though we might not want to hear or believe it, the spinach is actually good for us, even if it doesn't taste very good and doesn't look appetizing at all.
I know there will be times when this concept just won't seem very clear. There will still be times when we think:
But seriously, this time if I just had __________ then I really would be happier. Why can't things just be better right now?
And it might take us a little while to come around, but we just need to sit down, take a deep breath, and hopefully realize over and over again that we can decide to be happy, content, and at peace with our life right now and no circumstance can make us otherwise unless we choose to let it.
So let's do this. Because we're all in this together, right?
