Can I Tell You a Secret?

Some days, it feels like we’re all just lost in the woods.

Like we’ve been dropped out here and that we’re supposed to figure out how to make it home. We’re looking for that thing, that moment when we’ll reach the right door. We are waiting for a place to wipe our feet, a place that’s safe. Something entirely our own.

We’re all looking for home and some of us don’t even know what that means.

Would I know it if I found it? This thing, this person, this place where I can rest my head, take off my shoes, finally be myself? I’ve never known that kind of life, but they tell me it exists.

It mostly seems like a race, a competition, a challenge. Who can find home first? Who gets out of the woods first? And can they help everyone else find the way?

So we read books, blogs, articles. We watch tv, movies, youtube videos. We’re all looking for someone to tell us where it is and how they found it. How was it that you found that thing I so desperately desire?

Can I tell you a secret?

No one knows how they got out. They can give you advice, practical answers, steps they took. They might can point at a path, but they can’t really tell you what got them there in the first place. We get there. The questions of when and how are up to God and the choices we make.

What I can tell you is to work hard. Do that thing in front of you. Be the best grocery store clerk that exists. Sell bagels with more joy and love than a person can carry out the door.

Stop being the sum of words they put on your tiny shoulders. Because we all have them, those things that have followed us around like the little nursery rhymes and song lyrics we never forgot. There are the things that always sit with you and yet, make you feel so alone.

Let them go. They were never yours to carry.

Cradling coffee cups in our hands, I watched the world slow down for a minute last week.

I rested in the thought that it would be okay if I decided to be janitor and never do anything else. Because I could be the most committed, dedicated, loving janitor in the world and that could change things. I realized that it’s not about what we do, or the amount that we do, it was always about how we do it. 

It’s about who you are, never about what you do.

You are enough, right where you sit. If you never moved, you would still be worth loving.

But you will move, because you’ve got fire in your bones that pushes you to keep loving people and to make dents in the little corner of the universe you’re standing in.

So whether you do that with a mop, a headset and a bag of fries, or at a Fortune 500 company, you’ll always be worth the words i love you and you’re enough.

It’s easy for me to forget that when I’m out in the woods, looking for that next big thing, the next temporary avenue to joy.

There’s really no special secret to getting out of it, to finding your way. I don’t think that’s really the point. I think the point is learning to be the best traveler you can be, so that wherever you arrive you have something firm and steady to offer.

And if I get steady things by mopping floors, selling fries…give me a bucket and pass me an apron.