Lessons From a Sunday Drive

     The beauty of being a writer is that it provides a sense of control. I can choose what you want to say, and how I want to say it, and in most cases take my time making sure I say it the right way. In my last post, I was very honest about certain feelings I've been dealing with. The feelings I talked about haven't gone away, and my first instinct is to just choose another subject to talk about, and let the admission of those feelings be a single incident that is soon forgotten. But lately I've been hearing a lot about the value of being vulnerable, and I've decided to choose to do that instead of repressing my feelings and hoping they fix themselves.
     Yes, many aspects of my life aren't turning out how I wish they would right now. Yes, it's hard to be a slow learner and feel like I'll be in college for the rest of my life. It's even harder to be living in a place where people still remember who I was in high school, or even earlier, and assume that's still who I am now.
But even in a time where I will admit to being unsure of my purpose, and when I have to try very hard not to be permanently melancholy, I am still able to recognize many moments of happiness. My problem is that I don't know how to turn those moments into a constant attitude, and I'm trying to work on that. But yesterday, I got to spend the afternoon with someone who can always make me laugh just as easily as he can get on my nerves, and there was a moment where I became aware of my own pure joy, as I was laughing at his unconventional "dancing while driving" moves, and I was able truly believe in that moment that everything will be okay.
    I have lived for almost twenty one years, some happy and some sad, and even though I haven't always believed this would be true, the sad times have never been permanent. Knowing this, I have to choose to believe that my present circumstances are only temporary, and they will eventually lead me to times when it does not require so much effort to be happy.  Maybe, in a simplified way, that's what faith really is. It's believing that even though everything seems to be going wrong right now, everything on earth is temporary, including seasons of sadness. It's being able to mentally step outside of the present moment, and realize that just as there has been laughter in the past, there will be laughter in the future, even though we don't know when exactly we will discover it again. And even a person who has lost two jobs before the age of twenty one and who has barely managed to match the mathematical skills of the average third grader, yes even this immeasurably flawed individual, is able to laugh about something silly, driving at sunset on a Sunday afternoon.

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