The Rest is Still Unwritten!

I have those words on my wall . There was a time when I needed to be reminded of the “blankness” of my future – of the clean slate that lay before me.

In vinyl lettering, where I will see it EVERY day.

A failed marriage, a run in with a con-artist and several failed relationships had severely damaged how I saw myself and my life as a whole. It was a dark place to be.

Then, one day, the lyrics for Unwritten (by Natasha Bedingfield) hit me like a ton of bricks! Suddenly, it all made perfect sense.

As I drove down the road that day – listening to the words blaring through the speakers – it hit me! It's true! No one else can live this life for me. I can’t truly live if I am always afraid of the “next bad thing.” I have to live like I’ve never experienced the pain of rejection, the searing jolt of loss or the ache that comes with uncertainty.

Our society teaches us that making mistakes is “bad.” On the contrary! Mistakes teach us life lessons and skills that we need to succeed as we move forward on the path of our lives. If we never stumbled, or landed flat on our faces, we would never gain the wisdom we need to be successful at living.

It is vital that we take the knowledge gained from our mistakes, file it away in our hearts, leave the mistake behind us and move forward. There is no need to look back toward the mistake – we are not, after all, going in that direction.

Before us lies an unblemished path. There are no footprints on it yet, no mistakes, no pain and no expectations.

We have within us the information we have gathered and saved thus far on our journey. Our toolbox has more than enough items to aid us as we continue on our way. What works, what doesn’t, how to navigate specific situations and where to look if we need help. All these things are ours to tap into at any given moment.

Each of us knows where we’ve been and some of us even know where we would like to end up – and maybe not, that's not important now. That’s the beauty of life – we have the combined knowledge of all that have been through to guide us along the way – but…the rest is still unwritten!

No expectations, no judgement, just blank pages.