Giving life a reboot August 25 2014

Last week, someone posted on facebook a personal issue she had. It was 4 weeks after a major surgery, and she felt she couldn’t get her motivation to resume her life.

In our attempt to map out our lives and packing our schedules to the brim with activities, sometimes we hardly set aside time for contemplation.  “Downtime”, whether it’s an unexpected medical leave or a retrenchment, is life’s way of making us pause and take a breather.

We might have planned our career path, our life, kid’s future, but the moment something unexpected happens, all might have to change. Insisting on clinging to the original plan sometimes doesn’t work.

Imagine, you started the day with 4 must-dos lined up for the day, but while rushing out of the door, you slip and have a bad fall.  The stuff which seemed very urgent and “got to do by today”, now take a backseat. You beg your sister to get 2 of them done, re-schedule the important meeting, and call hubby to pick up some supplies on his way home.  The fact is there is usually a plan B hiding somewhere, and nothing is absolutely cast in stone. No one is totally indispensable.

So, why do we then become so frustrated when our lives don’t turn out as planned?

Whose plan was it anyway?  Yours or the big guy up there?

Most of us, at one point of our lives, have faced that “drop everything now” moment, when one thing interrupts and supersedes the importance of everything else. Do we crumble and see it as the end of the world or take it in our stride and walk a new path?

What if this new path IS the path that you were meant to take from the start, just that you were so obsessed with the “right way” and constantly ignored the signs?

On another note... some reboots are a little more subtle.

The phrase “mid-life crisis” came about in 1965 by a psychologist.  These days, young people also face another milestone…their quarter-life crisis, when they move to adulthood and the real world.

I don’t agree with calling it a crisis. To me, this is a good break from an old routine to open myself to new experiences and explorations. They are transitions in life that make people choose which direction to go, and it's just part of the journey. I suppose it's which viewpoint you choose that makes the difference.