Appreciate Where You Are

Appreciate where you are, because it's going to take you where you need to be. Yea, I know. I'm gonna get a little but woo woo on you today, but I am consistently amazed by the way life plays out. The small coincidences and seemingly insignificant moments that somehow add up to the magic of your life. Sometimes you're in a shitty spot, and you're like "why me? Why here, why now?" Sometimes there's no answer. Other times, it's a really crappy answer. Usually, it's something that doesn't even matter, a small little drop in the bucket of your life. But sometimes, things work out and you're like, oh ok. That's why.

Let me tell you a little example about that. Let's go back to like, 25 years ago. I was a little kid, and my parents had been looking for a new house for years. They needed it to have a separate apartment for my grandparents to live in, which was proving to be difficult. They finally found a decent one and were mulling it over. As we were looking at it, a little neighbor girl asked me where I live. I pointed at the house and said, "I live here!" My parents decided that was a sign and bought the house. That's right... my parents took housing advice from a three year old. What can I say? I've always been wise.

Let's fast forward 16 years. I was in college and took an accounting class. I went down to the bookstore armed with $200 to buy this giant encyclopedia of a book. Seriously... it was huge! A girl approaches me and tells me how she didn't realize the book was so expensive! She has to come back and buy it another day, but she can't do the homework in time for class. Before I can even stop myself, I'm offering to let her (a complete stranger) borrow my $200 textbook to do her homework. I immediately panic, like, what did I just do? In an effort to reel it back in, I tell her she has to come to the Science building with me (where my class was) to borrow it. She thanks me profusely and we go over to where my class is. She sits at a table in the common area to do the homework. I'm worried the entire time, but when I come out of class, she's sitting there waving at me with my textbook in hand. 

We became really good friends, and we had a few college parties we co-hosted together. They were almost always held at her house, and we got to meet a lot of really cool people that way. One time, we had a party at my house, in the upstairs apartment my grandparents had lived in. She brought a longtime friend, and he immediately liked the apartment and was asking a whole bunch of questions about it. I wrote it off, because we were about 21 and although we all wanted to move out, no one had money for an apartment. It turned out, he did. He texted a few weeks later and asked about renting it with a friend. We arranged a date, and he came out to see the apartment. 

He arrived alone, and I introduced him to my dad and brought him upstairs. As we're all looking at this apartment at my parents' house, the doorbell rings. I go down to answer and let his potential roommate in. I nonchalantly skip down the stairs, swing open the door, and come face to face with his roommate.

If we didn't buy that house... if my friend had enough money for her textbook... if I wasn't nice enough to lend my book to a total stranger, my life could have been completely different. The roommate at the door? Well, he turned out to be my future husband. I didn't know it then, but all these seemingly insignificant moments in my life had added up to the perfect love story. 

So, back to the topic at hand- appreciate where you are. Every single moment, every heartbreak, and every ordinary experience adds up to your life. You don't know if that random person you met will turn out to be a lifelong friend, a funny story you tell people someday, or help you meet your true love. All those shitty days in a bad relationship will make you bask in the glow of single life. And all those lonely nights crying about how you're alone (...or, was that just me?) will make you cherish a good relationship when you find it. Just get through today, and find something really fun tomorrow. It'll all be worth it in the end.