Today I turned forty-three years old.
One of my favorite quotes is āI donāt know where we are going but I know exactly how to get thereā from The Lion Trackerās Guide to Life. I think that sums up the past year pretty well.
Itās been a long and challenging trip around the sun and Iāve been questioning a lot of decisions weāve made recently. Moving to Scotland hasnāt been what we envisioned it would be and our house renovation gone bad hasnāt been a winner of an idea so far.
Despite all my moaning, there is plenty to be thankful for.
There was actual sunshine today in Glasgow. I got to spend the day having lunch with my wife, playing games in the afternoon with my kids and had a nice dinner with family in the evening. It was, all-in-all, a beautiful day.
In terms of goals for the next year, there was an interesting āicebreakerā question that we had in my work team hangout this week that led me back to my recent focus on self-acceptance and self-awareness.
The question was: if you could be the best at anything in the world, what would you pick?
Here was my answer:
I love making and drinking beer, but donāt want to be the best at those things. š¤£
I love drawing and painting, but you canāt really be the ābest in the worldā in those areas. You can be great at the technical aspects but, yeah, art is different for everyone so what would be ābestā?
Being the best in the world at learning a language would probably unlock some amazing experiences (and if I could learn languages, what else could I learn right). But I dunnoā¦
Ok, so Iām going to go too deep here probably. Haha. Here goesā¦
I would like to be the best in the world at accepting what I can change and what I cannot (i.e. not wanting more, not thinking about the future every second, accepting who I am with compassion).
This would be the thing that I think would make me the most āhappyā and also the best way for me to give back. For every degree I can improve myself āinwardā, I can generate another degree āoutwardā.
Donāt get me wrong, being the best skateboarder in the world would be pretty sweet, but as they say, mo money mo problems. š¤
So thatās it, off for another year again. Iād like to think that this past year Iāve gotten a lot of feedback on my decision-making process so this time, Iāll be more prepared.
I donāt know whether Iāll be fully at peace with myself at forty-four, but Iām confident I can be at least a few degrees more, and that seems worth the effort.
Comments welcome!