Bob Dylan’s great (and long, sixteen minutes) song, Highlands, includes this verse:
Windows were shakin' all night in my dreams / Everything was exactly the way that it seems / Woke up this mornin' and I looked at the same old page / Same old rat race, life in the same old cage.
Life can feel like that. Same-old-same-old. Or to quote B.B. King’s classic song, “The Thrill Is Gone.” If so, something to bring even a modicum of spice needs to happen. And chances are very good it won’t happen unless one takes the proverbial bull by the horns.
One more quote, this time from Mark Twain. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, Dream, Discover.”
To be sure, one cannot simply do whatever one wants. Often – maybe most of the time –circumstances beyond one’s control impose limitations. But I have observed that many people feel more fenced-in than they really are; they fail to take advantage of opportunities that are available, but which are unrecognized or disregarded.
Sometimes big changes or happenings can be engineered. But most of the time it’s the smaller ones that are available . . . ones that we actually can pursue, and which would add an enlivening spice to life. Identifying realistic opportunities and acting intentionally (and responsibly) on such can provide lifts of the spirit that make the daily grind less of a grind.
We can’t tell anyone else what will do the trick for him or her. We can encourage one another to explore and act so that same-old includes something-new. Something-new that refreshes and brings joy.
