When You Have To Leave The Best Things Behind
By Heidi Priebe
We’re not always going to be ready for the changes life presents us with.
There will be times when we get to stay exactly where we’re happy – curled up in the lap of everything we want, everything we have and everything we’re comfortable with. There will be times when we are struggling – grasping to figure things out and get to wherever it is we’re going next. And perhaps the most challenging time of all will be the chasm that exists between these times – when something unexpectedly rips what we want from us and forces us to leave it behind. When we have to walk away before we’re ready. When we have to leave what we want and what we love in the past.
There’s nothing more difficult than walking away from what we love before we’re ready to. Even when every fibre of our being understands that we must go, we want to stay. We want to linger. We want to find a loophole or shortcut that allows us to have it all. We forget that there’s a future. Some incorrigible part of us so easily forgets that there are good things ahead. Better things ahead, even. And perhaps that’s what we need to understand the most fully when we’re facing those times of transition – that all our best moments aren’t all behind us.
We have to believe that there are so, so many better things coming than any of the things we have left in the past. You have to have faith in the future, in the unknown, in the tomorrows and somedays that will line up in ways you can’t possibly imagine from where you’re standing now. You have to have faith in yourself – faith that you will get yourself to where you want to go, even if you’re not entirely certain where that is yet. Faith that your future self will figure it out. Faith that you are going to fight for yourself as determinately and as passionately as you deserve to be fought for, no matter where you’re headed next.
You have to remember every dreary day that preceded the some of the best days of your life and realize that that’s where you are right now – in the middle of that rainy day when it seems like everything is going wrong. You weren’t at the end of the story back then and you’re not at the end of the story now. Just because the scene in the rearview mirror looks nicer than the scene on the road ahead doesn’t mean you’ll never reach another beautiful destination. It just means you’re not there yet.
When you’re leaving behind a place or a person or a period of time when you were happy, you have to take yourself back to the start. You have to remember how unexpectedly you found so many of the things that ended up changing your life – how seemingly randomly the cards were stacked right before they unfolded the way they did.
You have to remember that the Universe is infinitely more chaotic than we give it credit for – that there are people you’re going to meet who you couldn’t dream up if you tried. That there are situations you’ll encounter that you never would have pictured yourself experiencing. That there will be days bursting with more happiness and light than you could possibly fathom from where you’re standing now. You have to think of all the times that life has surprised you for the better and know that it can do it again. That it will do it again – as long as you stay open to those changes. As long as you don’t let the endings close you off from the new beginnings that are waiting ahead.
It’s rare and it’s wonderful to ever find a place or a person or a certain situation that makes you want to linger for longer. We are creatures of the past and the future – always mourning what we’ve done or gunning fearlessly towards what comes next. When happiness hits us, we all want to cling to it as tightly and as mercilessly as possible. We want to capture it and hold it between our palms forever – not realizing that we have to let it go for it to mean anything at all. That we have to keep moving onward, facing forward, steering constantly into the fearful and unknown. That all the best moments of our lives are still waiting for us on the other side.
When we have to love the things we love behind, we are allowed to mourn them. To miss them. To look back on them dejectedly and sadly. But we must never, ever forget that the best days of our lives are not all behind us. That there are more wonderful things awaiting us in the future than we could ever even fathom. That so many of our happiest days are still ahead. And that we have to keep moving to get there – no matter how tempting that view in that rearview mirror is. The future we want will not arrive without our participation. And in order to get there, we have to blindly and blissfully trust that it’s going to be somewhere indescribably worth going.