The Sum Total

Have you ever adopted an idea as your own only to find out much later that it was lacking a key ingredient to make it fact? Yeah, me too.

I've spent the major portion of my umpty-ump years believing that I am the sum total of all my experiences. It's no wonder I had a glum outlook on my life and my position in it, not to mention that the future was severely discolored.

I love one-liners. They drive the point home for me more times than not. They're kind of a no fuss, no muss way to look at things too. But somehow, some of them didn't fit the scenario that I was a product of my past.

Certainly I could understand that some experiences mold a person, change them, even traumatize them. But how then could I explain the vigor and inspiration that would come even after a particularly horrible experience? Sour experiences do not a positive future make. Why then could I charge through these periods only to come out on the other side believing that 'next time, things would be different'?

Was it pure folly? Was it, as some friends told me, neurotic? Could it be simple insanity? I was baffled.

In the grand scheme of things that I label as my life, I began to delve into areas I had previously avoided at all costs. And very recently in that path I discovered the key element I alluded to earlier. All those one-liners began to make perfect sense now.

'If nothing changes, nothing changes.'
'If you always do what you've always done, you will always get what you always got.'
'Neurosis is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.'
'You don't have to change much... just everything.'
'A person can change anything, little by slow.'

What I failed to realize as I was trying to maneuver myself as a square peg into some God-awful round hole was that I was always facing backwards. If I focused on the past I was bound to repeat it over and over. But how then could I account for the hope I felt when I would venture into something new?

That was the unknown key. It was the one factor I never really looked at before.

I am not merely a product of my past experiences. Of course I have been molded and changed forever by some of them. They weren't all bad. Life has a way of pruning our character and weeding out the bad habits. If you are too stubborn you can find yourself in one compromising position after another. If you are really lucky you can glean all manner of things from the past.

Another of my favorite sayings is "Don't take yourself too seriously. It's comparable to life and we all know that no one gets out alive!" That was a big problem for me. Life was this serious thing to be dealt with in a most serious way. It didn't allow for mistakes or do-overs. And fun? What was that after all?

But hope... that unknown factor. That made everything clear. I was the sum total of all my experiences... plus... the hope that in the future there would be better days to follow. Without that hope I could not have withstood the pain of many of my experiences. The hope was the fuel to persevere and keep going forward. Life was an adventure, if only I let it be so.

There are still a few pieces of the pie that don't seem to fit. And God knows there are several missing too. But that pie? It's perfect just the way it is... much like me. Each and every day I just strive for progress, not perfection. Now isn't that a nice tidy sum?