Ferdinand and Plans Not Made

A couple of weeks back I made a Telehealth appointment with my doctor to tell him I wasn’t doing so well. I’m not doing so good this winter, Doc. He told me to remember that I didn’t have to be extraordinary and that I just needed to be average. It’s ok, just be average.

Average. Thanks for the new prescription, Doc. 

I sit and I think about being average.

I am average. Never making it out of Dodge average. Wake up, go to work, come home, repeat, average. Am I disappointed in that? It is fair to say that my expectations were high. I believed most of my adult life that if I could just check all the boxes I would be able to say I have done it – I have checked all the boxes, I have arrived on the other side.

Much of this box checking was done because I believed that it was what I should be doing. It felt like the assignment of life – first you do this, then you do that, followed by this next. It didn’t matter how I felt about it because eventually my feelings would catch up. Everything would feel different once the box was checked – I just needed to put my head down and persevere through the box checking-ness.  I believe another way this is commonly worded is faking it ‘till you make it.

I am quite angry at that belief. I have been faking it as long as I can remember, and yet the promise of feeling like I have made it has not come to fruition. I still feel that same – I have not arrived at the promise land. I have been duped.

What do I do now, Doc?

Be average. 

I will have to accept a clear truth – I am not who I wish I was. I am not who I hoped I’d be. I am an average version of myself, not an extraordinary one. I did not go far. I did not make something of myself. I do not make the most of my time.

I start books that I never finish. I buy maps for places I will never go. I have ideas for things I will never do. This is actually the place I have arrived and I led myself here. Maybe it’s exactly where I want to be. I don’t know.

I sit and I think while I have my coffee and watch the sky brighten as night turns into day.

I sit and I think and watch the way the light changes as the sun moves across the room.

I sit and I think while I stare up at the sky and feel the warmth from the sun on my face. 

I sit and I think about not sitting and thinking so I walk and think instead.

I lie in my hammock and I think as the birds fly back and forth between the feeder and the trees.