Looking For Wisdom In All The Wrong Places

I am writing this post for you as well as myself…

There is a dissatisfaction permeating the very air around us. This isn’t a menacing thought or one stated haphazardly, but something that I have been thinking about.

You reach a certain point in your life and start looking backwards. “I should’ve done this differently” or “gee, I have not accomplished AT ALL, what I thought I would have at this point”.

Fruitless ruminating.

Social media doesn’t help because it seems that everyone else has it together. Fabulous lives with fabulous homes and fabulous families and fabulous kitchens with just the right amount of subway tile.

“What am I doing wrong?”, we think. “What is wrong with me?”, we wonder.

The answer of course, is nothing. Nothing is wrong with you. You are more than fine.

The problem isn’t necessarily social media either. I have met blogging friends in real life whom I consider friends, and that never would have had happened without social media.

I feel that as people striving to try and find our “why”, we are trying to find answers from people and things and gurus and everyone and their mother, when the answer is really within ourselves. No, I am not spouting some new-age mumbo jumbo, I am saying that we ignore our gut feelings and what we really want out of life because we are doing things because that is what we are supposed to do.

Take myself as an example:

Growing up, I was a smart kid. I got good grades, took an AP class when it was merited, got into college, graduated from said college with a Bachelor’s degree, followed the blueprint that was my life. What precise job I was supposed to hold, I am not sure. I took a mediocre job after college graduation, got raises that barely covered my cost of living, and eeked out an adult-this-is-supposed-to-be-what-it-is-like living.

In my spare time I read voraciously and occasionally wrote.

But all I really wanted to do is be a mother.

I had this epiphany the other day when reading a post from a woman who always knew she didn’t want children and how people keep hounding her about it and at the end of the day, it is her choice.

For me, it is always been the complete opposite. I always knew I wanted my own family, I always wanted to be a mother, and even more to the point, I always knew I wanted to be a stay-at-home mother. I wanted to pick my kids up from school, bake chocolate chip cookies, go on field trips with the class, kind of mother.

This is what I always wanted.

And it clicked for me, why I never wanted some kind of professional career when I was younger, and why I don’t want one now. I think for the longest time, I kind of felt bad about that, like I had to hand in my feminist card or something, because I didn’t want to conquer the world. My generation was supposed to do it all, right? Well, I didn’t.

And the other day, after reading this woman’s post and her choices in life that had led her to this point in her musings, my epiphany non-withstanding, I realized that I have the life I have always wanted.

Yes, let me repeat that. I have the life I have always wanted.

It is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, let me tell you. There is no sugar coating here. There are aspects of my life that I want to change and am putting in place, the proper tools to do just that. I still struggle with my depression, which is and can be, a daily battle. I lost my home years ago and still struggle with the guilt of that. My finances could be better, sure and living in a super expensive state comes with its own woes.

But at the core: I have the life that I want. I am married to my best friend in the whole wide world and I have two daughters whom I love fiercely.

Everything else will fall into place.

I have been, to quote a song that I love, looking for wisdom in all the wrong places, but that wisdom is really and truly inside of me. I have been on this earth for several decades now, and no one knows what is better for me, THAN ME.

Me. I know what is best for me.

And maybe deep down, I always knew.