I was thinking back recently to the time late last summer into early fall when we’d had a bit of a respite from rising COVID cases and people were making fall plans only to have the Delta variant arrive on the scene. On Twitter, especially, “my fall plans/delta variant” memes were shared widely.
This one was my favorite (you probably have to be a fan of “The Office” to LOL at it):
And this one’s for all of us old enough to remember:
This whole vibe was sort of how I was feeling about the start of 2022. I used to feel a lot of hope and positive expectation at the new year, but the last two years have made me wary of thinking things will get better or that my life will improve in noticeable ways just because the calendar flips over to a new year. I’m not saying I have no hope for these things but instead of demanding them of the new year, I’m sort of tilting my head at the new year with a look of curiosity.
Like, “What do you have for us now?”
It’s a potentially dangerous question, but I’m trying to be open to what comes next, whatever it is.
That’s not a happy-new-year-rah-rah-crush-your-goals kind of sentiment, but those have never really worked for me anyway. (Plus it’s February now. We’re solidly settled into the new year anyway, right?)
I’m honestly wanting to navigate the space between false optimism and gloom-and-doom. I want to acknowledge the reality of the circumstances in which we live while holding out hope that things can change.
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I recently read an author bio that listed a bunch of amazing things the person had done before becoming an author: “J.R. has been an international spy, a professional skydiver, a jazz musician and has climbed three mountains and sailed solo around the world.” This is not the actual bio, but it contained similar jobs or positions that a reader might think are exciting or important. Maybe the inclusion of them in the bio was meant to impress, or maybe it’s just the author being honest about what has happened in their life.
Reading it discouraged me a little bit. I wondered if any other writers reading the bio might think, “Is THAT what it takes to be an author?” It’s certainly the kind of life that gets attention, but what about those of us who don’t have that kind of life? Can we still be writers?
More generally, I wondered if anyone might question their own life experiences, thinking “interesting” lives are the only ones worth anything.
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My life is hardly what I would call exciting and I kind of like it that way. I’m a middle-aged white woman married to a middle-aged white man. We’re raising two kids (one a teenager, one a pre-teenager). My favorite pastime is reading a book in my pajamas. I like being at home because the world exhausts me. No one important knows my name. No one would look at my life and think “Wow! What an amazing life she’s lived.”
I don’t say any of this to elicit sympathy or words to the contrary. This is my life, and what it lacks in excitement it makes up for with stability, depth and meaning. (I hope. I don’t feel this way about my little life every day, but I think it is true overall.)
Does that mean it’s not important?
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I have the pleasure of being part of an online writing group through the health and fitness community My Peak Challenge (founded by Outlander actor Sam Heughan). In the last year, I have gotten more involved with the Peaker Writers, as our subgroup is called, and it’s been encouraging to my writing to talk about the projects I’m working on and support other writers in their endeavors.
This year, our group designed a T-shirt for members. The motto we chose to represent our community is “Live a Great Story.”
It’s a message I believe with all my heart–that we’re meant to live a great story with our lives.
What, though, I wonder does it mean to live a “great” story?
Do I have to accomplish a never-before-attempted challenge? Do I have to have an exciting career? Do I have to take an impressive trip? Do I need to found a charity that saves the world or fund a movement that effects some massive change?
Are those the only ways to be “great”?
I’m pretty sure that’s not what our group meant when it chose this motto.
We’re a gracious, supportive, inspiring, encouraging group who celebrate every goal and challenge met or worked toward. (The entire My Peak Challenge community is this way. You don’t have to be an elite athlete or work out hard every day or run a marathon or lose 100 pounds in order to be encouraged and celebrated.) It’s one of my favorite things about the community: your goals are YOUR goals, no one else’s and you get to decide how and when and if you reach them but every step forward (or backward) is cheered and encouraged and full of support because we recognize that life is not a straight line and reaching your goals is not an onward and upward kind of journey. Sometimes it takes us in circles. Sometimes we have to go backward or pause or change course. That doesn’t mean we’ve failed.
But back to being “great.”
Can we live a great story in the midst of our everyday lives? Can our stories be great if they don’t measure up to some lofty idea of greatness?
I’d like to suggest that yes, they can.
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One of the fun things about my job as a teacher’s aide in a reading class is all the new knowledge I acquire. I’ve learned about interesting people and places and animals from these small books we read together with our students.
A month or so ago, we read a story about a British man named Alastair Humphreys who 10-ish years ago (these books are a little bit outdated) launched the idea of micro adventures. Humphreys has done some big adventures, too, but he had this idea that maybe you didn’t have to climb a mountain or run an ultra-marathon or travel around the world to have an adventure.
He says this on his website: “you do not need to fly to the other side of the planet to undertake an expedition. You do not need to be an elite athlete, expertly trained or rich to have an adventure.” That’s good news for most of us.
I wouldn’t consider myself an adventurous person but I do like to experience new things and see new places. I’m a curious person but also anxious about certain adventures. I love to travel, for example, but I have high anxiety about the whole process.
Humphreys says, “I believe that adventure is about stretching yourself: mentally, physically or culturally. It is about doing what you do not normally do, pushing yourself hard and doing it to the best of your ability. If that is true then adventure is all around us, at all times. Adventure is accessible to normal people, in normal places, in short segments of time and without having to spend much money. Adventure is only a state of mind.”
Adventure is accessible to us, in the places we already live. That’s an encouraging thought, especially in pandemic times when travel and adventure are more limited than in pre-pandemic times.
So, Humphreys came up with these micro adventures, the kinds of things you could do in a weekend or close to home. You can check out his website for more about these micro adventures. Some of them involve sleeping outside. Others are food-related. (He has a challenge about eating A-Z international cuisine that intrigues me.)
All of them are meant to be done close to home. This, too, could be a great adventure.
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The lure of fame in this insta-fame world is strong. We want to go viral or get noticed by someone famous or do something extraordinary. But most of us won’t. And even if we do, the fame will be fleeting. So much new content is generated every day that what was viral one day is old news the next. If that’s what we’re striving for because we believe it will lead to greatness, I think we’ll be disappointed. It’ll feel like sand slipping through our fingers.
What if instead of chasing that kind of life, we look at the life we already have and redefine what it means to be “great”? Some of the greatest people to live through history are people most of us don’t even know. I’m no longer surprised when I hear about an inventor or activist or business owner from the past whose name isn’t well-known. There are so many stories and lives out there; not all of them can be known to everyone.
That doesn’t mean their stories and lives weren’t great.
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Live a great story.
I’m still working out what this means for my life. I’m not seeking fortune or fame or notoriety. (That stuff terrifies me because I’m so very awkward and ordinary.) I’m not seeking to make some big-time lasting impression that people will still be talking about decades from now.
I just want to live wholly and fully in the moments I have in front of me. To me a “great” life is one where I’ve followed my convictions, stayed true to my heart, sown kindness to those who come into my life whether they deserve it or not, and loved well the people and places in my care. I will consider my life “great” if at the end of it, I can see where I changed and learned and grew and can’t imagine it being any other way.
To live a great story is to choose daily in the direction of what makes the world a better place. That’s probably going to be something different for you than it is for me, and that’s what makes it such a beautiful world. I can’t tell YOU how to live a great story; only you can decide that for your life.
All I can say is that you don’t have to let someone else decide what greatness means. You get to define it.
So, what does living a great life look like for you?
I agree that we define what “great” means for us and us alone. It’s okay not to have been a spy or some other type of adrenaline junkie, and comparison can be a thief of joy. I’ve had people say to me, “You’ve been through so much, my problems are nothing compared to yours!” And I’ll tell you, this breaks my heart. I got dealt a lot of wild cards that included trauma for sure, but you are free to feel how you feel. Those feelings are valid. I think the biggest challenge is to look at the tapestry of one’s own life and be honest about what you really want without caring who’s looking, but the answer is the reward.
Thanks for sharing your perspective!