For most of my life I have felt like a feather in the wind. Like the one in Forrest Gump. The feather that symbolizes destiny and/or dumb blind luck. Forrest muses that maybe it’s a little mixture of both. It seems to point to an accidental kind of life, but it always shows up at just the right time, so maybe destiny brought it there. I ‘m not sure what I believe.

I’ve been blown this way and that way all of my life depending on the shift of air currents.  I, unfortunately, was one who rarely followed anything through to the end, instead giving up or getting bored and catching another breeze shifting me in another direction. At the beginning I set out with grandiosity in mind.  But I wasn’t as assertive or maybe as ambitious as I should have been.  So, instead of forging ahead with my own thoughts about how I wanted my life to play out, I let other people influence me and opposition to get in the way. I let it hold me back until I started to lack the strength to keep moving forward.  Instead I floated, like that proverbial feather, letting the shift of the wind carry me to wherever it happened to go. Obviously that grandiose picture of my life in my own head was not the destiny that was intended for me. Or could it have been different if I tried harder?

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been blown to some amazing places in my life, and for the most part, I’m thankful for the experiences I’ve witnessed. I have had much happiness and joy.  It’s just now, during the impending autumn of my life that I feel a restlessness like I didn’t do enough to satisfy myself.  Wait, that’s not exactly true. I have felt restless all of my life. Fact. And currently I’m trying to come to grips with what seems next to impossible to achieve. Is mediocrity all that looms in the distance? If it is, I wish I could be content with just that. As I think back, there were many times in my life that I wish I could have just shot a little lower and been satisfied. But I never was and still am not. I often wonder if this is really it because restlessness overwhelms me and satisfaction eludes me. What will it take to bring me to that place? To bring me to peace?

These are just the things I’m pondering on a gray, rainy day. I’m sure most people contemplate the same at one point in their life or another for reasons different from mine.  There are no answers for the moment, and the contentedness I pray for evades me. Since I just can’t seem to get to that place, I figure that maybe I still have more to reach for even at this late date.

Forrest’s advice (and mine):  Don’t be a feather in the wind.  Take ownership of your life.

Keep reaching for and doing what makes you happy. Just keep running the race.

And that’s all I’m going to say about that.