IN THE GRAND SCHEME OF THINGS

   I’ve learned a lot in the last few weeks. It’s crazy how much you want things to change sometimes, but once they do, you crave the familiar. 

   I’ve gone to the same high school for four years. I graduate in about a month. But, because of some choices I made every year, I now have to attend a different high school in order for me to graduate on time. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. 

   It got better, though. My first week at my new school was the most terrible week I’ve ever known. I thought I knew how hard it would be. Yes, I would miss my friends. Everything would be different. I wouldn’t know a soul. This is all true. But I could have never known how hard emotionally it would be. It was hell. 

   But time passed. And amazingly, I became ok, too. I’m not 100% yet, and I don’t think I will be. Right now, I’m just numbed. 

   I know that what I’m doing right now is the best things for me. I think that If I had made the decision to leave sooner it wouldn’t have had the same effect on me as it does now. I also know that this is what I needed in order to prepare me for leaving home. Whether to college or another adventure, this is how it needed to be done. The next time I leave, and this time for good, it will be easier. But, in some ways, ways I can’t see, it will be the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. But I’ll do it, because it’s the right thing for me to do. And I’ve some of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.    

     Some simple truths.

• Once you leave, you can’t go back to the way things used to be.
• Time heals everything. If you let it.
• No matter how hard something is, or how alone you feel, you will adapt.
• If you let go of what used to be, you’ll see that everything will be ok. 
• Chance is a cycle, and the sooner you accept that, the easier it will be.
• Trials help us get to where we need to be and help us see things from another perspective.
• If it’s the right thing to do, it will be worth it. 

This morning I learned something most valuable. 

I woke up this morning at 4:30 to make breakfast for my father who had to be somewhere at 6. Sitting at the kitchen table, he told me it was incredibly nice of me to get up so early and make him a king’s breakfast. 

I told him I was glad to do it because he always makes sacrifices for me. Making breakfast wasn’t anything compared to what my father has done for me. But it was the best I could do. 

And then I drove him to where he needed to be. And I will pick him up in 5 hours. 

But what I learned is that something that is usually so dark and dismal as waking up before it’s even light, can be something really quite perfect if you are helping someone else altruistically.