The Roller-Coasters of Life

Life is funny sometimes. Sometimes we stress so much about certain things in our life and it turns out to be a good thing. Many of you know that I am a deep thinker. Sometimes I feel like Gregory House (from the show House), never fails that near the end of his show he will be in mid sentence and a revelation happens and he has his "Aha!" moment and then rushes off to save the day. Well my moments have no real significance and I definitely don't save the day but boy do I get some deep insight into life at times.

The other day I was having a very typical conversation with a person, nothing really personal, just "How ya doing?" For some unknown reason I responded, "Just hanging on the roller-coaster of life". And to that the person responded, as many people would, "I hope for mostly ups". I agreed and went on with my day not really thinking much about it. As I was driving home my dad pointed out a carnival off the express-way and "aha!", I thought about that brief conversation. I looked at the carnival and thought about the ones that I had been too, mostly fun until I got to the, what they would like to refer to as, a "roller-coaster". In all honesty there is not much to it, you go up a few feet, come to a straight stretch, whip around a corner, go down a hill, and back up and then it's over, not really that much fun. When I think of a roller-coaster, I can't say that a carnival one is the type I picture. I envision one that has this slow and intense climb to the top of a steep hill and then it whips so fast around a corner it takes your breath away, and then it plummets down and then back up and goes in a loop and once you come out of the loop you are climbing right back up another hill only to plummet further down into this cave-like slope where you can't even see the bottom, it's pitch black dark and you feel the coaster slowing down. Then suddenly off in the distance you see a speck of light slowly growing closer and closer and as the light fills your surroundings your eyes begin to readjust and it's like you are seeing the whole thing for the first time. You hear the chains as they slowly pull the coaster up the incline and you look up but all you see are the tracks heading up. You look back and what seemed so scary has become so small in comparison to where you are headed. You hang out at the top for a while and then you plummet down one last time until you suddenly stop, rides over. And even though there were times that jerked you around so hard it hurt and you were falling down so fast it scared you to death, you still want to get back on the ride. That's how life is, we have many ups and downs. For every up (success) we have to come from a down (depression for some). You see a roller-coaster is all about momentum, all those twist and turns, ups and downs are what allow the ride to climb higher and higher, and that's what makes it exciting. So many of us want to not think about or not have the down hills in our lives, it's hard to face, sometimes even scary, but those down hills gives us new eyes to see a multitude of perspectives. If we are only at the top all the time, all we see are the small things, nothing is important and in return if we are only at the bottom, everything is too big, it begins to become overwhelming but its when we travel from the bottom to the top that we gain appreciation for those things in our life and a sense of humility. For me, it's when I am in the down slopes in life that's when I learn to face my fears and come out of the dark whole that I was just in, with so much knowledge and fresh eyes to see new things that before I couldn't see because I had my hands over my eyes. I chose to embrace the down hills in life because I know that they will help me get to the top, and the further down I was, the higher I will climb. I also thought about the sounds of the chains pulling my up with my hands raised in the air, those sounds are the friends and family cheering you on as you climb your way to the top. No one's roller-coaster is the same, but we all have one.

In life I think of the journey to the valleys and down slopes as the mistakes or actions that got us there. We all have them, some deeper than others but they are there. So many of us choose to stay in our valleys, it's comfortable there, why not. Climbing out of a valley is hard work, but the more you climb, the more you are headed to the top of the mountain of your success. I'm not saying that we can't be successful in our valleys but think about how much more successful you will be once you actually start climbing. Those lessons that we learned from our mistakes are our path stones up our mountain. If it wasn't for the valley's and mountains of life, we would be on a plateau, nowhere to go but straight and nothing to learn, BORING! I don't want to live a boring life, I want an exciting life, so I just have to deal and learn from all that goes with it!

It's funny that a simple response triggered all of this inside of me. What was even funnier was I took my GRE exam for my Master's program and the first part of the exam is a written part. You get to choose from two different topics and you have to write an essay on one. As I glanced at the screen the first option was about a quote "Only through our mistakes can there be discovery and progress", I didn't even look at option number two, I knew that was what I wanted to write about. The entire night before all I could think about was how much I have learned from my mistakes and how my roller-coaster was finally coming into the light and I was beginning to see things from a new perspective. All night I thought about this and here I now had an opportunity to write from the heart exactly what I was thinking about the night before. Oh, how life can be so funny.

I don't go to the amusement park to ride the train, I go to ride the roller-coasters. So I will keep on hanging onto the roller-coaster of life with my hands in the air not looking back but keeping my eyes fixed at the top!