Become who you were born to be.
Two years ago, on a whim, I chose a word that would be my guide through 2017 - the word being "evolve". You can read about my reasoning for that choice right here; in sum, I saw life drifting away while I stood idly by, unhappily spectating. A year later....a mostly un-evolved year, I might add....I more thoughtfully chose a new word for 2018, a word that could build upon the barely perceptible evolution I had begun the previous year. A word that could more actionably bring change to my life. A word that would, by its definition, force me to live it rather than hide behind the sometimes passive nature of evolution. My #oneword at the opening of 2018 was "explore"; with the year officially and permanently closed I now reflect and find.....success.
The evolution I sought but never found in 2017 arrived a year later, brought forth by the forces of 2018's explorations. Without going completely bananas I spent the past year pushing myself into to new adventures which, in far too many prior years, I would have been content to avoid or ignore. I fished new waters and traveled new roads, adding a sixth lake to my list of secret spots and weaving my way across several states to visit my sister's family for the first time in more than a decade. I wrote like I've never written before (or since), embarking on a #100DayProject that added 100 posts to this blog. I was forced to explore life without grandparents, but through that experience became the voice my family needed in a way I had been reluctant to explore in the past. I cooked new foods, coached new teams, found new friends. I got a freakin' mobile cellular phone device! I picked berries in patches I'd always dreamed of visiting and filled the buckets I'd never before filled. I hunted in new ways...and found the same lousy results. Both literally and metaphorically I veered off of the paths I found familiar, comfortable, and slightly unfulfilling and instead put down steps in new directions that have given me a year unlike any I can remember, a year of adventures topped off by the single greatest event I've ever experienced - two nights with my daughters witnessing the Final Four and National Championship of the NCAA volleyball season. So as 2018 settles into memory, I can do no more than give a contented sigh and a weary, but thankful, smile at all the year brought with it. And now, the conundrum.....
What's next? Where do I go from this point? I've explored and evolved, I've had a mostly terrific year...what title do I now give the next chapter? Like last year, I've pondered words while looking forward while thinking back. Unlike last year I've got a taller task ahead of me: this coming year must somehow build upon a momentous prior year. The baby steps I started with became tepid strides which found the confidence to become leaps...which seem to have led me to the precipice of something bigger. Something bolder. Something that's been waiting for me.
In J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings saga, the character Aragorn is the rightful, but reluctant, heir to the Throne of Gondor, the man who could be the King of Men. As evil spreads throughout Middle Earth, Aragorn is called upon to lead men into battle. The fighting is easy for him, the leading not so much. The movie adaptations of the story took liberties with the timeline of events in the books, including Aragorn's acquirement of Anduril, the sword which is symbolic of his rightful place as King. In the movie, Aragorn is visited by Elrond, King of the Elves at Rivendell, who had the sword re-forged and presents it, rather forcefully, to Aragorn with the admonition to "Put aside the Ranger, become who you were born to be." Become who you were born to be.....
There are no thrones in my lineage. I am the heir to nothing beyond some acres of land and a few thousand trees. I will lead no men (or women!) into battle. But that scene, always one of my favorites, played over and over in my mind during the final days of 2018. And as the scene repeated, one of Elrond's words stood out above all others:
B E C O M E
2019 will be the year I "become". I will make no predictions on what I will become, I will lay no plans. I have some flickering hopes of what might become of me, but rather than pigeonhole myself by laying bare those thoughts I will instead wrap my vision around the idea and let the forces of last year's explorative growth carry me forward into who-knows-what. I evolved away from the stagnant man I was, I explored a bit of what life can be - now I set forth to become....more.
Happy New Year. Let's all make it become a good one.
