Some thoughts on the events of today.

Life is strange. Time is even stranger. The most valuable lesson I’ve learned over the last several years, and one that’s been reinforced this past year on the road is that inner peace comes with truly recognizing just how unpredictable everything is.

Those things that once stressed me out are now simply just moments to reassess direction. Change is persistent. Certainty is an impossibility. At best, what we imagine to be ahead may or may not be. And the more capable we are of being at peace with things as they change, the more we open ourselves up to new possibilities. Someone who I both admire and adore often says “the only certainty is possibility”. And that is as true now as it has always been.

I had been planning to spend the next 6 weeks or so in my van. Snowboarding and chasing storms. Right now that is unlikely to happen. And while that sucks I now have a huge puzzle to figure out. I have stuff in San Diego. I have stuff now in Colorado. The van may be repairable. It may be totaled. I may rent a place for a couple weeks. I may head to the ocean. I may go abroad. Whatever I do, I can only imagine it will be filled with as much mystery as tomorrow. And that mystery is wonderful.

One of the songs I’ve been listening to a lot lately has a line in it that says “tomorrow is promised to no one”. And that’s the truth. As I looked at the wreckage of my van, my home, the thoughts of what “tomorrow” as a concept held were turned upside down and inside out. And while my heart sank a little, I felt fairly peaceful. Tomorrow is promised to no one and that’s the reality. For more than 20 years I worked with a plan towards a future vision of my life. At almost 46 that vision is more like a prism or maybe more like a kaleidoscope – with every turn, the image changes. It’s no longer a fixed image. It’s more like an ever changing collage and in that collage are endless possibilities.

There are a lot of logistics to figure out in the coming days and I’m thankful that in life I’ve learned to get shit done and to get it done efficiently and rapidly. I’ve got plans and yet what will happen next is anyone’s guess. I’m at peace with it all. Sure, it’s super frustrating, but no matter what, moving through it all no longer stresses me out like it used to. I’m more in control of how I feel or maybe I’m simply more at ease with uncertainty. Whatever it is, it is. Whatever it will be, it will be.

Our lives are fleeting. You can think it and say it a thousand times but the real question is what are you doing about it. I get it, I have no kids, no house and essentially no real responsibilities so my version of life and yours may be different. But if tomorrow isn’t promised, what are you doing about it today? What decisions are you making? What joy are you finding? What changes are overdue? What words are unsaid? What are you waiting for?

Whatever you think you will do down the road is most certainly never going to happen. At least not in a way you think it will. So if you’re delaying pursuing the things that give you great joy, don’t. If you’re attached to some fictitious outcome or vision of your life, let it go. If you think you have time, you don’t. Get out there. Do the things you love. Then do more of them. And if something gets in your way, either move through it or go around it but don’t let it derail you. It’s all going to be gone before you know it and it’s definitely all going to be gone before you want it to be.

Get rid of stuff. Find the least you need of everything. Simplify your life so that you can move through life with the least amount of baggage (physically and metaphorically). And don’t ever believe that the things you have today will be the same things you have tomorrow. Take nothing for granted and become detached from everything. This doesn’t mean you have to remove how you feel about things but it does mean you have to be able to separate how you feel from what you want.

Fuck. I have a lot to figure out – and it’s actually kind of exciting.