19 Hours

In 19 hours I'll be taking my drivers test. I cannot even begin to explain how excited I am to finally have my license. I've been aching for the freedoms associated with driving. The glamorous ones like being able to actually take someone out to dinner, and the smaller ones like picking up my sister from cheer practice.

While driving is all well and good tonight, for the first time in a long time, I walked. I just walked from my house up to Jaclyn's but it was glorious. The weather was perfect walking weather. It was about 55 degrees and had just finished raining. I absolutely love the smell of the outdoors after a rain storm. Probably my favorite smell in the world.

What it made me think about was the concept of arriving. Arriving at a destination or at something bigger. How do we know when we have truly "arrived"? There are hundreds of different places to go, hundreds of different routes to take to get those places, and hundreds of different modes of transportation. You can travel by bike to a neighboring town, by foot to a friend's house, by car to a different state, and by plane to a different country. But the travel least discussed least is growing. Growing up is in a way traveling. You pass different obstacles and road blocks in your path to arriving as a mature adult. And in some cases people never make it. All I really have to say is that wherever you're going, and however you plan on getting there, just get there. If you miss your chance to get there once, find a new path and carry on. I feel I am on my way to arriving. In many essences I have arrived and in some I'm still struggling to get there. Persistence is crucial. You have to accept that sometimes you'll have to stray from your intended course because it's the only way forward. Progress is progress even if it isn't the quickest way somewhere.

They say the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but straight lines are overrated. Life is about those squiggly lines and the bumps in the road.

A cockeyed path may just be the best path.

NP: Breathe In Breathe Out- Matt Kearney