Day 100: Learning The Hard Way

Day 100, it is hard to believe how fast this year is going and how much has changed in just 100 days. It is also hard to believe how much I still have to learn at age 50. While so much has changed, so much in me hasn't. Even at age 50, I always, always have to learn things the hard way.

I don't intentionally choose the hard road, it just seems that I don't know any other road to travel on. It is familiar, and oddly, it is very comfortable. I think I am this way because I am stubborn, or at the very least, I hold firmly to the things I believe.

Once I see things in a certain way, I am usually so convinced that my view is right, that I seem to dig my heels in, often at my own peril. I was so convinced that there's only one way to do things, to achieve success, to have happiness, that I couldn't see that some of those choices, ironically led me to have just the opposite.  

I am finally starting to learn that looking at life this way stops you from seeing that you have other options, that you can do things differently, and that you can change them.

But, it takes a lot of work to change a lifetime spent traveling down the same road. And, sometimes it takes something painful to make you really see that you need to choose another path. Life is hard enough, we don't need to make it harder by adding unnecessary obstacles as we travel through it.