You may have heard that life is not a dress rehearsal. That you can’t wait for your “real life” to begin.
You get this idea.
You understand it.
But you are still waiting, aren’t you?
Even as you get on in age, even as more and more of the things you thought about when you were young — marriage, children, homeownership — settle into place, you continue to feel as if there’s another layer to life that’s yet to arrive. A more fulfilling, more concrete, more vibrant layer. One that will bring everything together. One that will signal that the real life you had long anticipated is indeed underway.
The enticement to this belief isn’t hard to understand. It’s more desirable to think that everything which has come before has only been a preliminary build-up — that the beat to life’s music will drop any moment now — than to accept that the dimensions that lie before you are all you’ll ever have.
Family. Friends. Work. Hobbies. Spirituality.
This is the palette of colors you’ve been given to create the art of your life. These are all the layers that do exist, and that will ever exist.
If life feels stubbornly flat, this may seem like a depressing fact to recognize. But it needn’t be a reason for despair.
Work to add depth to your relationships, purpose to your profession, adventure to your pastimes, and passion to your faith, and you’ll discover a most fortunate fact: happiness and fulfillment aren’t dependent on waiting for a layer that’s forever coming around the corner, but making the most of the ones you’ve already got.
