Until recently, my mind played a game of “forget ‘bout it” so that I could just keep moving forward until I was freed from risk of continuing unwanted patterns around me.
When raised to not talk about your feelings, as odd as this may seem to say, this can become one of your greatest strengths.
When completing a race or challenge, no one stops to talk about how tired they are getting or how much more they still have to go.
There’s no time for that or would it be a good idea to acknowledge such reason to stop and not continue.
You just hear that inner voice whisper to you again, Just keep going. Just one more.
That’s how you get to the next part, corner, or chapter.
Just keep going.
Just one more.
One more day.
One more mile.
One more try.
Once the day is done, the mile has been run, or the try has been given, you get to repeat the same saying, Just keep going. Just one more.
One more doesn’t necessarily mean the same road, path, or challenge.
It could be that when arriving at another day, another opportunity to run another mile, given another try, a finish for yesterday’s course or as far as it could go, may be the truth speaking inside.
One finish is just a starting line for this knowing or wanting for yet another challenge to pursue.
We aren’t done until DONE are we.
I recall finishing my first book. The publishing company has gone out of business, but my reason for writing it was never for acquiring financial gain.
Any gap I found with my time and space given, I sensed an urgency and need to fill, what to me, felt senseless to just let be.
Overlapping one challenge after another took care of any gaps in between.
Just as soon as I was in control of my life, being a college student and a mother to a wife to graduate to a certified teacher to first, a homemaker, to a sports mom to a volunteer mom to now what?
Let’s organize and structure your daily schedule from waking up ahead of everyone to hit the gym, come back and make breakfast for the kids, drop them off, run errands and tend to the home, get dinner ready, pick-up the kids, and be ready to tend to the family furthermore.
There was always a gap to be found. I cleaned, I tended to the yard, and then, with a gap to be found, I started writing my first book.
When I shared with my husband my thought to write my first book, he gave me the push I needed to get going.
“Start today,” I recalled him saying. That, I did.
Just keep going. Just one more.
Why a book? In addition to the sense of release it gave me, it was written as a memoir that I felt had to be written for the sake of those in my generation who would have wished someone had.
Everyone has a role. I, for one, like Kenny G with his saxophone, having always carried a journal (before phones came along with notepads), have always felt the need to write, as I continue to do.
There are a few things that just don’t change. Pursuit for understanding, for one, is a great part of me.
I write to reflect so, like a seed opening itself to the beams of the sun, absorbing the warmth from its comfort, my roots can peaceably push through the thawing soil having endured the coldness of winters.
While reflecting on one’s thoughts are ever-growing, always developing into greater wisdom as it matures, those behind who will read of your thoughts many years to follow, at times, will reap the benefits of knowing that you shared similar trials and tribulations.
One who has lived to talk about life, victoriously, under such mindset of finding every moment as reflections of growth and understanding, such strengths are fed into hearts, minds, bodies, and spirits who perhaps would have been influenced otherwise.
You hang around those who direct or suggest for you to give up, at most difficult times, waiting to pity you as if secretly already knowing, subconsciously hoping for your defeat so need them, you would, with such permission and passivity, that direction would be most calming to follow like a bird flying into a fire pit.
You hang around those who fear to quit, who persevere through storms and floods, the challenge would most strongly suggest to not be the first to give in or surrender. The comfort would come from the discomfort of easing down. You would hear, if not around you, but in strengthened conscience, Just keep going. Just one more.
Think the magnitude of either mindsets followed.
Imagine if someone in your bloodline wrote a book about all the reasons to quit when discouraged. Imagine if that were the only book passed down your many generations to follow.
You would then pray that one would contrarily write about perseverance to victories, I would hope.
You would think that one would have provided other options than just surrendering when times got tough, I would hope.
You would think one would point out those to watch out for, those who devour other people’s time or money through self-pity, playing victim to their own drawn-to predicaments, I would hope.
Almost golden in age, I reflect to say that I ran from fear of permission to fail.
I saw such permissions only for those to not just accept their failures, but embrace them.
I could not, would not, and thus, knew, I should not allow myself to think moments of perceived failures were permanence to fail.
Papa had always mentioned that I reminded him of his own Mama.
How I would have loved and cherished even one word of advice or reflective thought of life from her.
Somehow, I would like to believe, even with just one thought passed on, I would have been able to tell whether or not she and I were more connected than just having the same physical attributes and demeanor.
I would have wanted to know her thoughts on challenges, how she overcame them.
Although having never met her, the fact that she remained married to one man, having given him nine children (Whew! Walking backward with head bowed down and no eye contact, while silently closing the door on that one!), there need be no actual meet-up for me to know that she was indeed strong.
No one wants to fail. And yet, failure may be the very reason for one to stop and never keep going.
While one does not plan on failing, if one does not prepare on how to respond to failure, what to do if (and when) it comes knocking, getting trampled by its stampede once you open the door, will most likely be the occurrence.
Facing it, addressing it, smiling or even laughing at it, grants you that understanding that there is no failure unless you stop.
Giving up is failure. Whether failure is what the moment may seem, you must hear inside the words, Just keep going. Just one more.
We aren’t done until DONE are we.
Getting up, whether seen as defeated, depleted, or sometimes, practically destroyed in various ways, is that victory that only those who have experienced such greatest fight to stand back up understands.
Every heart, every mind, every body, every spirit, possesses its own threshold.
It can be difficult to see someone give up on something you could never see yourself doing the same.
Placed in another circumstance where all of a sudden, you are put to trial, there will be witnesses as testimony to your own acceptance of defeat or discontinue.
Now and then, and quite sparingly, I quietly listen to my husband share with me the surfaced moments of his childhood that took him over twenty years of our togetherness to ooze out of his memory.
Similarly, I realize there have been so many buried of my own.
We weren’t ready to stop and talk about our unspoken fear to fail many years ago as young parents.
I realize now, we each had our unspoken reasons and thus, determination, to give our children all that we had envisioned for them.
We were just going, just pushing for one more.
Today, having moved far enough from fear of certain patterns to repeat, we can walk a few laps without running.
We release. We acknowledge.
And, then, like a whistleblower from a steam engine sounding, as if we took all the quick break we needed, we take a deep breath, exhale, and go, we keep.
We keep going. We continue for one more.
One more day.
One more mile.
One more try.
Many days, miles, and tries later, here we are, still.
We forgot to forgive. At least we pretended to have forgotten.
We never really did.
We “forget ‘bout it” doesn’t really mean to have forgotten.
We just had to release any weight trying to pull us down so we could keep moving forward.
We set the bricks aside, meant to burden our hearts, minds, bodies, and spirits from taking another step.
Perhaps there are those of us who can hear, see, smell, taste, and feel failure too well.
Perhaps some of us build walls with the bricks we have slowly stacked throughout the years collected.
Perhaps the house that we build will just be shields from possibilities, feeling safe only when indoors, confined to the walls we initially put up.
Each brick, a failure, every reason found to no longer venture to the other side until a door or window is all that’s left to provide an escape out.
What happens when more bricks stack up? Only the windows and doors would be left to close off.
Which side will you find yourself standing?
Those who run ahead and move forward knows the meaning of, “Forget ‘bout it.”
Let go. Set aside, at the least.
Those bricks don’t go away.
Just keep going. Just one more.
No bricks allowed.
