and does it matter if we don’t…

might be the only place to get our sh*t together…

My youngest texted me the other night and I asked her what she was doing. She said she was “working on getting her sh*t together.” I texted her back and said, “honey, I’m 67 and I still don’t have mine together. In fact I don’t even know where it is.”

Since I was at the beach with my girl friends we all started talking about this and every single one of them said they didn’t think we ever really get it all together. So my question today is….Can we truly get our sh*t together or do we spend our entire lives trying to do this? It seems to me and this is just my own personal experience, whenever I think I have it all together, life goes…”not so fast there girl”…and something happens to let me know I don’t.

I’ve spent most of my adult life working on “me”…trying to be a better person, figuring out who I am, and what I want out of life. And honestly I think I know less now than I did when I was in my 30’s. I read all the self help books back in the 80’s and 90’s…books by Norman Vincent Peale, Dale Carnegie, Steven Covey and more… they all helped me be more positive after my divorce and even do some of the things I always wanted to do, like have my own business. But now in my 60’s I have no clue how to get it together. Could it be because we think we know everything when we are younger and as we age we figure out…we don’t.

Maybe the answer to this question is that as we age we know we don’t have all that much time to figure it out anymore? That the life we have left is growing shorter every day and we won’t ever figure out what we really want or desire. I’m not saying by any means that I am unhappy or feel “less than” for not figuring out my whole existence by now. But I really would like to know what I’m here for, why am I on this earth and what am I supposed to do…or have I already done it?

“Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.” ~ Jim Rohn

I still think I should get my sh*t together once and for all at this point in my life. Really I should. I just don’t think it’s possible. However, I did come up with a theory of why we can’t while we were all discussing it and this is what I came up with….Hope you are ready for this one…Maybe we work on our sh*t our whole lives and that is what we are meant to do… and then when we finally, once and for all get it together and figure it all out…we die. I know…I know…but it does make some weird cosmic sense that this may be the answer. We finally have attained the unattainable… so what is there left to do?

After coming upon this life altering thought… I then decided not to work so hard on getting it all together any time soon because I want to be around for a while. I am just going to enjoy my life, have fun and give up on trying to figure it all out. This isn’t easy for me to do because I have this deep seated need to be aware of my reason for being here. I always have. I don’t know if I can really do this or not. But I’m going to try.

Having said that I am going to give up trying to figure it all out also means I can not waste time on the “why’s” in my life…why don’t I still have the marriage I thought would last forever, my family that is gone and the money I was told I would have is not there. Things like that. Thinking about things such as this drive us crazy. Change happens through out our entire lives, as we well know “the only constant in our lives is change.” Sometimes we just have to deal with the cards we are dealt and move forward. It’s the same as constantly trying to get our sh*t together.  We need to learn to live with the fact we may never get it together. And that’s ok!

Ok, I’ve decided getting my sh*t together isn’t important! Life changing decision for me. I hope I can do this. So then what is important? What is important is being able to live in the moment. Don’t try to live in the future and worry about what is to come or dwell on the past and think about the “why’s and “what if’s.” Live life fully, enjoy the people we love and who love us. Dance to the music, walk in the rain and lay on the beach listening to the waves and just “be”… Live!!

Do you have your sh*t together? If you don’t, does it matter to you? If you do, please tell us how you did it?

“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.” ~ Mark Twain  (maybe this is why I felt like I had it together back in my 30’s..I was very self confident then…and also very ignorant)