First, those of you
who shared your answer to my question (If you could open a door to anywhere,
where would you go? ) Thank you. It is good to know that some of you spun
on the question, as did I. But, I was impressed by many of you who just knew.
Love the thinking behind the question.
If you could open a
door to anywhere, where would you go?
I might
open the door to Cannon Beach, Oregon June of 1974
Playing with my
brother and sister on the beach while my mom watched from the deck of our beach
house. Wave diving was our favorite and we would go out until our feet were
touching and the waves were hitting our chest. We would let the waves carry us
back to shore. My siblings were wanting to go out deeper and had told me to go
back into shore.
My dad would tell
us over and over not to ever turn our back on the ocean. So, I was hopping
backwards and letting the waves hit me and bring me to shore.
I was watching my
siblings wave dive – they were pretty far out - when a very large wave hit me.
My sister must have sensed something because our eyes were locked as the wave
hit and knocked me over. But the wave wasn’t alone, it carried with it a drift
log. And, within seconds, I was pinned. Just like that.
I wouldn’t go
through the door to prevent it from happening, but I would go through it at my
current age to witness it, to fill in the gaps in my memory and to replace the
blurry faces with real ones. The face of the crying woman who tried to keep my
head above water. The faces of the three men and one woman who helped my mother
pull the log off of me. And the faces of the two lifeguards who cleared my
mouth of sand, wrapped my ribs and bandaged all the cuts.
I know my mom did
over and over, but it would be nice to see if I said thank you to these
strangers. I sure hope I did. But, if I didn’t at that moment, I know I have
said thank you millions of times over the years.
In a class long,
long ago, my professor said , “a goal is a dream set to paper.” I am not
attributing him, because he candidly admitted that he was not the originator of
that quote and also because that is the only good thing I got out of his class.
J
That quote has been
rewritten on every journal I have, to remind me to not just think goals, but to
ink goals (see what I did there?).
As we look at this
year, might we take advantage of our current isolation situation to learn more?
Online classes,
reading, podcasts … so much opportunity and the situation is prime for it.
I encourage each of
us to write down our goals and put them to action in our development plans.
