Doug and my thoughts on change

As usual, I come to the keyboard with a lot on my mind. I worked tonight at the coffeeshop. It was a slow night, which allowed me quite a bit of time to contemplate, and possibly create, the lives of those spending their Sunday night in the Borders cafe. There was one man I was particularly drawn to. He was tall, pushing forty, well-dressed, with hair like the men in L.L. Bean catalogues... dark, but a tinge of grey right around the temples. I've named him Doug... although I doubt that was his given name. Doug's drink of choice was a large decaf americano and he spent three hours reading a book called "GOING TO PLAN B : How You Can Cope, Regroup, and Start Your Life on a New Path." Watching Doug sip his americano and read this strange life-changing book, made me wonder about him. What was he coping with? What was Plan A? And more importantly, was he happy? Was he happy with needing a plan B? I wondered if he had left his previous path because he hated it or because it hated him. Was he ready for this change?

The bittersweet sensation of change has been present in my life more than ever this past year. I remember packing the cars in Cleveland and driving the 12 hours through the dirty, February snow to the Twin Cities. The cities I have grown to love. Without that change, I would have never experienced the joy and wisdom given to me by so many people over the age of 85, and I would have never been able to see so many perfectly painted sunsets cast their orange glow over the Minnesota horizon. The fact of the matter still lies in knowing that if I had been born here, I would have left here and gone elsewhere. The fact of the matter is that everyone has to change. It's the way we were created. We changed from babies into children, from teens into young adults. I will (hopefully) change into a wife, a mother, and a mentor. Everything we were, we are no longer. And everything we will be... we will soon be no more. I can't imagine the world with only winter, or living in eternal autumn. Much like the seasons, we constantly change... I think we have to, to keep living life. The best way I have come to view this need for change is likening life to a book. Only in the good ones do the characters end up different than they started.

Sometimes, I wonder if I missed a step somewhere. If I let go of a friend too soon or overlooked a possible love interest. I wonder if I took this job without thinking it through or found this apartment before surveying all my options. I wonder if I skipped a page in this book of life... but then I realize that life cannot be read on a flat page. It has to be lived. We have to fall in love too many times for our own good. We have to laugh at our own shortcomings. We have to pack up cars and drive through snow and move to Minnesota. Some of us, even have to spend a Sunday night or two in the Borders coffeeshop reading books about how to start over.

This whole life thing... be it a book, or a movie, or an epic poem... is meant to be lived. It is meant to be carried out in a million different settings with billions of beautifully intriguing characters, and believe it or not... it is fleeting. Soon, our credits will roll and those who knew us will mourn over the memories of how we once were all the while shaken by the fact that we will never again be. Eventually, there will be far more pages before the bookmark than those left to read and we will approach the epilogue of our lives with much anticipation. Not only the expectation of a better place, but the anticipation of a wonderful place left behind. We will approach this ending with the knowledge and hope that it will speak of a live well-lived, it will speak volumes of something beautiful.

So... It is nearing 2AM and I fear I will render myself incapable of life if I stay awake for much longer. My point of this blog entry gone tangent is that I encourage you to live. I encourage you to love, to laugh, to learn, to leave, and come home again. I wish for you an abundance of change. God has created this life for us.... for you... and it would be a shame not to take full advantage of all that entails. This book of life is ours to be read, ours to be lived... even if your living turns your temples grey and forces you to cope, regroup and start from Plan B.

Goodnight, friends. Live Well.

~Tempa