HAPPY 10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY TO ME!!!! Oh, and NEW YORK!!! Yes, I have lived in this great city for TEN years now! Anniversaries are always special but 10, being the first double digit and metric base is meant to be particularly special. I don't know that it is the completion of ten years so much as the timing of life events that makes me feel like I have especially grown this year, but however the timing worked out, I do feel like something in me is "complete".
This week I have been watching the freshmen move into their dorms as I am preparing to finish the last semester of my Master's degree and I can't help but reflect (as I do often) on my own journey and transformation since I first moved to New York. We have the blessing to write our own stories with our lives. I suppose I try to write my life hoping it's not a book I'd put down after a few chapters or a movie I'd walk out of before the credits roll. It may never be a blockbuster or hold anyone else's attention, but as long as I don't lose interest in my own story, I'll consider it a success.
The best stories are about characters who evolve or tragically devolve. Mine, I hope, is a steady evolution. I am not the girl I was when I got here, for sure. I don't have all the same habits, desires or ideologies that I had when I arrived. I can only imagine what my life would have been if I hadn't moved here - some kind of alternate universe or Back to the Future scenario wherein Ashley of 2006 marries a right-wing conservative and works 9-5 at an engineering firm. The thought makes me cringe a little now. Not that those things are bad, it’s just not what I want anymore. It's perhaps not the kind of dystopia a Biff Tannen reign might bring about (and I think we all know who Biff Tannen is right now) but I can still imagine ten years down that timeline I would have felt something was missing or there was something I wanted to do and didn't. I could not be happier with the woman I've become and for the hope I have of the woman I am yet to become. In other words, I feel solid, ya'll! So with that I give you TEN lessons NY taught me to live by or at least consider 😊
1. Seek Wisdom - There are many valuable attributes one can have but wisdom is the most valuable. There ARE such things as mistakes and not all of them are necessary.
2. Don't allow your heart to harden - I would say "choose love," which really is always #1, but a hardened heart has a very skewed understanding of love and a heart can only give away as much love as it can hold. Hard hearts don't absorb, they break.
3. Forgive quickly and frequently - ok, truthfully, I'm still working on this one. I know it is true, but there is balance of forgiving and trusting I've not yet mastered. Little stuff, sure! No problem, forget about it! But the big heart stuff... You can forgive someone without trusting them, yes, but if you don't trust them then you don't really want them around, right? Which then begs the question, "have you actually forgiven them?" I dunno, I'm only 31 and open to suggestions. It's a hard one.
4. Be quick to admit when you are wrong and ask for forgiveness - This one is easier unless you have a PPP, personal pride problem. The most difficult people to love are the ones who never admit to their own faults. Nobody is perfect. The sweet spot is finding those who love you despite your ImPurFekShens. So just own up to it.
5. Learn from everyone and everything - Everyone you meet knows something you don't. Every person you meet is an opportunity to learn. Every situation you encounter is an opportunity to learn. Never go through a difficult situation without taking away a lesson, otherwise you're missing the point and wasting your time.
6. Seek knowledge - lesser than wisdom in my book but still up there in priorities. In this day and age, there is really no excuse for staying ignorant. We are all ignorant of something, but staying that way when presented with new information is something else altogether. Anyone with Internet access and even the smallest facility for filtering reliable sources has no excuse to STAY ignorant.
7. Know you are beautiful (handsome) and worthwhile without the excess - because when you take away the nails, the makeup, the weave, the designer clothes, the chiseled abs, all the products and fancy gadgets, what are you, really? You better know. And don't wait for someone else to tell you.
8. Rid yourself of foolish friends. Dumb and foolish are different. Dummies can still learn if they are willing. Fools are those who know what is wrong and do it anyway. They don't recognize the consequences or just don't care, but either way their bad decisions will end up hurting the people around them too, so don't let that be you!
9. Try to see things from someone else's perspective - an oldie but a goodie. It is the key to compassion. It is the key to resolving any issue and it is the best reminder that the world is bigger than any one of us.
10. Trust God/Keep Faith/Stay Hopeful - I have to fit these all in one because I said ten. I could keep going but attention spans being what they are, I'll wrap it up. Even if you don't believe in Him, He has a way of working things out. Faith without works is dead. I didn't make that up, I promise. I may have plagiarized it from the Bible... or maybe I didn't. But you are reading this, so you have Internet access, and if my writing doesn't sound like gibberish, you have the mental capacity to find out where that phrase came from. I'm sure 😉 Do as much as you can, step out in faith and God will fill the gap between what you can do on your own and the part where you need help. He might fill the gap with that wisdom you've been asking for, or some people who have what you need or know the things you need to know, but he will fill it. And even if you have failed, He never does!
Well, thank you, New York! You've grown me up and taught me a lot in a decade. Some might say I'm a little more jaded. I say, I'm just not surprised anymore. This relationship thing of ours has been tough at times, but you didn't crush me. You might have held on really tight at times, but you always loosened your grip right before I felt like I was going to crack. As for my part, well, I didn't give up on you. I thought about it sometimes, a cozy place in the suburbs, a house and a yard for a dog and kids I don't have yet because you're taking your dear sweet time... But hey, I can't just walk out on you... I ❤️ NY
