Reinvention

In the early stages of adult life we eagerly strive to create our reality.  We educate ourselves in our chosen profession-to-be, shrug off the clothing styles of school acquaintances and slip into well-worn jeans and warm sweaters and play dress up with delight when the occasion calls for it.  Forays into multi-floored stores for 'grown-up' furniture to blend with what we have scavanged from family starts to define our home.  We try on different hats, explore new interests which capture our attention, travel.  Our thirst knows no bounds.

We are the inventors of the landscape of our lives.

Castelnau Picampeau, France

Then we are hired for a job that isn't exactly what we went to college for and we shift focus.  A cozy apartment becomes a bigger one.  Padded shoulders go out of favor (thank goodness) and we morf toward new styles.  We read the book a friend lent us and see a world deeper than portrayed in romance novels.  We haunt the library for more.  Life expands and grows around us like a cocoon.

People enter our lives and some leave, moving on to follow their own path.  Loving expands us.  It is a slowly revolving door and each relationship grows us from the inside out.  We learn from example the type of person we want to be.

One job leads to another.  Relationships evolve.  Family.  Friends.  We weather crises and find strengths we didn't know we possessed.  Looking back we see a series of reinventions - one sliding into another.  Close-up, they are more abrupt. Change is scary and challenging and, at the same time, exhilirating.  Fate gives us options but we make the choices.  We move forward because the clock ticks and time's-a-wasting - this is not a dress rehearsal.  We try to pull back the reins and slow the process, but it travels on hooves hell-bent to get to the goal.

We raise a family, work to make our lives an easier journey, start saving for the 'future'.  We shift and change over and over.  We are still pulling on those reins, though.

Reinvention - it is not a goal but a stage in our continuing life.  Slip on that new jacket and take up the reins.  Hope you have an interesting ride!