Today's Challenge:
Can you remember a moment in your life when you had life in yourself and it was wholly strange and new? Can you remember the moment when you stopped walking a path of someone else, and started cutting your own?
Write about that moment. And if you haven't experienced it yet, let the miracle play out in your mind's eye and write about that moment in your future.
Today's entry:
I feel like this post should gravitate to significant events, like finishing my Ph.D., our wedding day, or the birth of our daughter. I find, though, that significance can overwhelm a moment. Those were all amazing days, but they were the culmination of so many events and emotions that they're a haze in my mind. I have to take out the pictures some days to feel like I was actually there.
The moment I find myself thinking of is a road trip I took with some friends after college graduation. We visited a friend who lived in rural Montana, and he took us climbing out into the foothills. Actually, maybe they were just hills. No Sherpas were involved, but it was a decent climb.
The air was clear, the weather was perfect, and for a moment, I realized I had nowhere else to be and nothing else I had to do. I just wanted to reach the top – not to conquer it, but for the simple joy of climbing.
For a moment, at the top, I was overwhelmed with a sense that none of the little things trapped in the crevices of my mind mattered. I could see a storm in the distance, but it was nothing to be afraid of. I knew the rain would come soon, and I welcomed it.
There was nothing special about that hill or even that day, but I go back to it in my mind all the time. In a way, I think I realized that I was on the threshold of adulthood, and that was ok.
I could choose to climb up, and I could choose to climb back down. I could choose to stop at the top of the hill and take it all in for just a moment. Once in a while, I'd get rained on, and that was ok, too.