A few months ago I was lucky enough to be living and working in New York City for the summer. You could say I was thriving. You could say I was living out a dream. You could say that I was obsessed with my life and that I was more than happy to announce to the world that I was so content with where I was and what I was doing. I was so happy that I even wrote an article called “Be Where Your Feet Are” to encourage people to embrace where they are in life and to essentially make the most of wherever they are.
If there’s anyone worse at taking their own advice, it’s me. I knew that moving from New York to Auburn, Alabama would be a bit of an adjustment, but I didn’t know how badly I would miss a place that I only called home for three months. I didn’t know that I would be so unsatisfied at the lack of excitement when I came back to small town Auburn. In New York, I felt like every day was the best day ever, and I’m sad to say that it does not feel like that in Auburn. I most definitely threw away my “be where your feet are” mentality as soon as I came home because frankly, I didn’t like where my feet were. I didn’t want to 'seize the day' and take advantage of every opportunity coming my way because nothing happening here was as grand as it was this summer.
And then I had a realization. Something simple and easy, nothing that I didn’t know before, just something that I had forgotten: You can’t only love your life in the seasons when it’s meeting all of your expectations.
If we do this, we will only be let down, day after day. As we all know and have read time and time again, life doesn’t have a roadmap or a game plan. You don’t know what weeks are going to be the best and which ones are going to get you in a funk. You don’t get to hold every day of your life to this extremely high expectation that you’re going to have the best day ever. YOU have to have the mindset to not let it be the worst day.
Of course things will go the wrong way and yes, some days won’t be those magical highs where you feel on top of the world, but you have to make the most of where you are. Sometimes you might love where your feet are, and other times you might have to learn to love where your feet are.
Call it a learning curve, call it a different season of life, but learn to make the most of your ordinary days. (But don’t give up on striving for extraordinary ones, too.)
