This Side of the Creek

When I was growing up, there were many things I wanted to do and be. I can remember playing school with my sisters and knowing for certain that I would grow up to be a teacher. The next day, I would be out in the garage with my former step-dad convinced I would grow up to be a mechanic and at dinner I would want to be a cook just like my mother.
I was fascinated with just about everything. From zoology to oceanography to astronomy and biology, I wanted to do it all. But there was one thing that was constant in all my indecision and that was the desire to be a gymnast.

I began playing softball as soon as I was old enough to throw a ball and I excelled at the sport almost through high school. I still play summer co-ed softball to this day and love every minute of it. However, gymnastics had always been in the back of my mind. I would watch it on television and crave the opportunity to do a floor exercise in the Olympics. I even penned a poem about it my freshman year and could recall the way I would parade around in my bright orange swimsuit, doing flips off the picnic table and landing as if I had just won a gold medal.

I never entered the first gymnastics class and I still can’t do a back flip, but the dream remained until recently. After much contemplation, I realized that everyone is called to do different things in life. We each have our own paths.

No, it doesn’t hurt us to dream and dreaming can actually be a very healthy thing. However, when we hang on to unfulfilled dreams and allow ourselves to minimize what he have actually achieved all because we never reached that one thing, it can lead us into resentment of ourselves and our lives. We may then feel as if nothing is good enough because we were never a gymnast (or zoologist, or football player, or astronaut or…).

Lately I’ve I’ve accepted the fact that some people were/are gymnasts and I was/am not. In light of that, however, I realized that I am an award-winning writer, a great softball player, a good student, a there-for-you friend and so much more. I don’t want to live in what I am not. I don’t want to watch gymnastics on television and feel as if I’ve wasted my entire life because I was never even close to jumping on the floor mat for a routine.

I am who I am. I’ve done what I’ve done. In the next moment, I will be who and what I will be.