Choose Your Path In Life That Puts A Smile On Your Face

I read in a magazine the other day that we spend something like ninety percent of our time not living in the present. Meaning we are always thinking about what we are about to do or what we have already done, rather than thinking about what we are doing right here and now.

This article came to mind as I’m watching my son, now returned from hiking in Wyoming, sit sullenly on the couch looking forlornly at the Delta luggage tag still hanging from his backpack. His clothes had not hit the washing machine yet due to that nostalgic smell of campfires and sagebrush that still clung to them and reminded of a fantastic week of throwing boulders off mountains and swimming in fast moving 35 degree rivers.

The reason for the sullen mood was he was now faced with The Great Dilemma. As adults we are all faced with a series of Great Dilemmas, but young people coming of age find that first taste of life being in shades of gray very hard to comprehend. Things were so easy when life was in black and white. When Ms. Cox told you if you talked in class one more time, you were going to take a fast trip down the hall to have Mr. Plunkett explain to you the value of silence from now till you left Airline High forever. Those are the days of when life was really easy....in hindsight, of course.

His Great Dilemma is now that he loved everything about Wyoming. The college, the people, the weather, sleeping under a billion stars, long nights by the campfire where he and his fellow campers spent hours sticking the shovel into the coals until it glowed red and then running to plunge it into the river where it would billow steam and then run back to shove it in the coals again. Great fun for 18 year old campers. My husband listened to him recount his trip, while whispering a sidenote to me as to how this must be one of the enriching activities young people miss by sitting on the couch playing Xbox.

But, he also toured the college a second time and realized that Louisiana Tech had the Wyoming engineering program beat. Hands down! I was thrilled to think that our little college in Ruston left most other schools in the dust when it came to a quality engineering education. Not just anyone could engineer a nano, AND teach it with enough pizazz to make our smartest young people eager to learn how. Also it was a plus for me that Tech does not have bears. And my son, after having the time of his life in an area that he had taken to like a fish takes to water....or a bear takes to a human shinbone....realized that a quality education tipped the scales quite a bit when weighed against everything else.

The Dilemma, however, has to be solved. The one piece of advice I felt I should offer was that whichever way he chooses to go, he chooses that path and does so with a smile on his face and joy in his heart. I mentioned people we know that choose a life in one place or another and do nothing but moan about how much better the place not chosen is. Like in that article, never enjoying the here and now, but let years roll by moaning about how much better is a state other than Louisiana, a place other than Bossier, a climate other than sweltering southern summers. Makes me always want to offer up how pleasant tubing down a freezing river in northern Idaho must be.....while a bear’s pawing for his lunch 3 feet away.

We all make choices. I explained to my confused young man how I had to put aside my own hopes for a career in Extreme Hangliding when a blue-eyed man walked into my life and offered to share the next fifty years of his with me. Also I gave up the Astronaut thing to thoroughly enjoy day after day of reading Good Night Moon and spending ten hours at a time in the toy aisle at Wal Mart. I never looked back. And I never really acquired a taste for Tang anyway.

Dreams should stay with us. Guide our futures, but not cloud the present. Feel the here and now. Smell the crepe myrtles. If Louisiana it is, make that choice, and then enjoy the heck out of every minute of it. Tech is silky voiced southern girls with sunbleached hair, and buddies that don’t throw boulders, but ride around in duelies and ‘go muddin.’ And very few cougars.

This seemed to perk him up enough where I felt I could follow my daughter out the door to rollerblade down my suburban ordinary street. The street that I raised three children on and still had a mailbox painted bright green from a budding twelve year old artist. But it did cross my mind that Women’s Rollerderby was gaining popularity again, and when my daughter left on her own journey, I just might look good on ESPN.