Story

It has been a little while since I have written anything and this post probably will not be very long.  It is 2:46 in the morning and I was just laying in bed, trying to fall asleep, when I started thinking about my life a little bit.  I looked ahead and saw where I want to be in a week or a month or a year.  Then I looked back and saw how far I have come from a week or month or year ago.  I also looked at the goals that I set for myself and compared those goals to where I am now.  I am not really where I wanted to be, but I am glad to find myself here.  It is not that I have failed in my goals, just that my goals unknowingly changed as I went along with the life that I have been living.  All this thinking of time and goals got me thinking about why I am not where I wanted to be.  It is because over most of my life I have pushed aside the concept of my "life story."  As I was laying in my bed thinking about life I realized that it is not about being the best person, it is about becoming the best person.  School is not about being the best student, it is about becoming the best student.  Faith is not about being the strongest believer, it is about becoming the strongest believer.  I have heard it many times,"The journey is just as important as the end product."  Do we ever really take that to heart?  I look at my life and see areas that I have wanted to improve for a long time and I am constantly  confused as to why I am not the person that I want to be yet.  I have come to realize that it is because I have only ever looked towards what I want and not how I am going to get there.  If I spend all my time dwelling on the end product, I will never start working towards it.

I often find myself questioning the motives of people that I do not know.  Yes, I know that it is wrong to judge people that I do not know, but it happens.  Why do I do that?  Why do I question the motives of people who have a reputation of doing good?  I see what they do and it is all good.  They say the right things and make the right motions, but there are times where I almost feel sick because I think that they are being  fake.  Whether or not they are being fake is irrelevant to this topic, because it is my own fault that I judge those around myself that I do not know.  I have not gotten to know the story of how they have become the people that they are and that is all on me.  I can look at my close friends, who do the same things, and know the reasoning behind their actions.  I know they are genuine because I know where they have come from and what they have gone through to be where they are at today.

At the end of a persons life, someone might be remembered for the money they had when they died, or for their last act of good or evil.  It is more likely, though, that that person will be remembered for the things that they did on their way to the end.  The 60 years in the middle are going to be remembered for a lot longer than the ten at the end.

Your legacy is not where you end up, it is the story of how you got there.