The Next Big Thing

A while back I wrote a blog in which I discussed living through rather than getting through each day. I’m in a place right now where I fully need to remind myself of the words I wrote:

"It's so easy to take our lives on this earth for granted because we live them every day. We fall into our routines – going to work, coming home to make dinner, maybe hitting the gym [well, that hasn’t been happening lately], watching some TV, and finally falling into bed exhausted from one more 24-hour cycle. I know I have a bad habit of feeling like life is just a series of challenges we have to overcome. And it can be!"

Yes, life can seem like a series of challenges we have to overcome – or a long list of not-so-fun items to check off the list before we can get to the exciting ones.

It’s not that I’m unhappy or unsatisfied with this day or this moment; in fact, while I strive to constantly do more and be more, I am quite content with the place I’m in right now. But there are so many things to look forward to that I’m finding right now a difficult concept to concentrate on.

My life has become one big countdown:

4 days till I make a decision on my wedding dress...
12 days till the Bon Jovi concert...
13 days till I turn 27 (yikes!)...
17 days till we head to Illinois for a weekend with our families...

All of this stuff is coming up, and that’s just in the next month. What if we look a little further into the future?

45 days till our next trip to Key West...
86 days till we get married...
116 days till we’re in Illinois yet again...
123 days till we leave on our honeymoon...

I suppose it’s human nature to look forward to the exciting things that we have planned, especially when one of those things is as big a deal as a wedding! But I hate feeling like I have to get through these coming days, weeks, and months in order to get to the next big thing.

I want today to be the next big thing! I want to really try to live through the moment that I’m in, because, whether I’m at an exciting concert or just getting groceries at Wal-Mart, saying my wedding vows or just telling Brandon about my day, I will never, ever get this moment back.

So I hereby name today The Next Big Thing, and vow to myself that I will let it live up to its name by living through it and not just getting through it. I may still fantasize about my wedding day, and I’ll certainly fret about my wedding dress. But April 6, 2010, will be its own big thing, and not just one day to check off on my way to the next one.

There will always be things to look forward to, and I’d be delusional if I couldn’t admit that sometimes we all need the future to keep ourselves going in the present. But if we spend too much of our time looking ahead, we’ll eventually be looking back, wondering how we missed it all. And I don’t want to miss anything.