Step by Step by Step

Have you ever stopped to look back on your life and think about how many things you have done and been? The roles you have played? Does it strike you how all-consuming and exclusive some periods were for your time, energy, and attention? And then, one day – just like that – those times are left behind in the rearview mirror and are gone forever.

Think about heading for a high school diploma. Then maybe a university degree. What about certain trade certifications? You worked like crazy for weeks, months, and years. Then you get your reward: the paper, the job, the crop. Your life – and your role in it – changes again.

We don’t approach anything the same way twice. Immersed in the learnings and experiences of the day before, we approach each new day essentially as new people. Incremental changes maybe but change nonetheless.

Think of your first day at your first job. How exciting and scary and confusing it was. Compare that to the type of days you came to have ten or twenty years into your career when it had become pro forma. “Just another day at the office.” Even the second day at your first job was different from the first.

In relationships – if we’re lucky – we are constantly changing and growing. The best marriages come to mind when they are respectful and mutually beneficial loving partnerships. But every day, we become different people and so do our partners.

I’ve been thinking lately about what it means to be a parent to adults. They don’t “need” me now. So I often find myself in deep conversations with myself about how to approach certain topics with them. I did not have that level of caution and awareness when they were children.

I have also thought back on myself as a university student. Nothing else mattered in the world except showing up for classes, reading the prescribed books, and doing whatever it took to ace those courses. Then, you graduate. And somehow that all magically disappears. Mind you, in the workplace, it often feels much like term papers when a draft article or speech is due.

I am an inconsistent cook but mostly love it. Without question, my most ambitious and complicated dishes have been tackled when I was in a partnered relationship with someone. There was more balance for me in the domestic arena.

I made homemade liverwurst once. I have made surprisingly good stuffed green peppers. I have made a Crosse & Blackwell-worthy apple chutney. But then life got busy, and bazinga, I am relying on cold sandwiches and hot soup as mealtime staples for weeks.

Fitness and exercise is another area where I – and I believe many others – blow hot and cold. I have been a full-out gym rat for some periods of my life. And then something happens. I stop going to the gym. Six months later, I am like some slug of a couch potato who never worked out a day in her life.

So I am wrestling with what’s up with all that. I am back into a renovator’s role to set up a “new to us” house. I am picking paint colors and flooring and imagining how rooms will look and function. It is not as all-encompassing as it was on my first few tries. That is something of a relief. Now I have a better idea of how it will play out. I have a better idea about what to expect.

I know more than when I first started doing the renovation and decorating thing decades ago. So the process goes a little faster and with a little more certainty. But is still a step-by-step process that can’t be rushed. The walls must be painted before the laminate is laid and the furniture is moved in and the housewarming invitations are sent out.

Maybe that is the way it is supposed to be. We are meant to weave in and out of various passions or pursuits and roles in our lives. We are meant to get stronger at what we love and are good at. We finally arrive at a place when we recognize and know better what that is.

When we achieve what we need to learn or do or change at each of our life stages, we get some ephemeral internal message to move on. Not a bad system when you think of it. Step by step by step.