Baggage Restrictions On Easy Street

This post is part of a Blog Challenge called Secret Subject Swap. Details can be found at the end. My “Secret Subject” was:
May is National Recommitment Month. Is there something in your past that you’ve started and never finished? Why did you quit? Is it something you can recommit yourself to?

In honor of Sigmund Freud’s birthday today, I took a psychoanalytic approach to my subject instead. Enjoy!

People are quitters by nature. Very few have the gumption to hold out and see something through to the finish, especially if they hit a snag, snare, or pothole along the way – and that is perfectly okay.

We are creatures of developmental comforts. Complex simplicity. Habitual pursuits. As individuals, and as the whole of society, we strive continuously to make our lives easier to endure within the confines of our systematic culture. Humans constantly complicate things further with a frenzy of chaos – all done to find the most effortless way to live, as of yet. Just the same as humans have done since the dawning of their time.

It is true of me, despite my soul’s contradicting desire to break free and roam the universe without limit. I, too, at some point since my birth, have tentatively resigned myself to the fact that I want to take the easy way in life as much as the next person. The path of least resistance has always been the most tempting, even if the way to Easy Street was found on the road less traveled, (because I never said I wanted to travel with everyone else; I said, ‘like’).

A lone bird may not flock with the other birds of a feather, but the instinct to migrate remains. There’s no point in fighting the urge. When the time comes to head to warmer climates, the lone bird still drops everything and takes flight. No questions asked. That same instinct to take flight when I feel the calling for a more desirable comfort- with no regard to my current commitments, is in me. It is in all of us, to some degree or another; a distinguishing trait of nature found in most living creatures.

The broken commitments of my past migrations are just as responsible for where I stand today, as the ones kept and seen through. I am comprised of every admitted failure, called timeout, plea for mercy, and tossing in of the towel I have made up to this point. Every change of direction and conscious decision to walk away, too. If I change the outcome of any one of my past convictions, it would change who I was to become over time… potentially causing me to develop into an entirely different woman all together.

That, in itself, is a very tantalizing and alluring thought. Why? Because I instantly thought of having myself a life far easier and steadier on course than the one I have right now. My mind instinctively presumed that finishing any commitment I neglected to follow through with would produce a better life. Yet there is no certainty it would work out so. No guarantees. Just probability.

Would I like to see what the future would’ve had in store if I had stuck out that relationship with my first love when we were too young to understand compromise? Of course. Would I want to go back in time and find the motivation to finish nursing school and walk away from my rebellious overdrive? Hell yeah! Would I desire a second chance at the great job I lost out of sheer immaturity, to prove my sincere loyalty to the position? Without a doubt.

The wise, old soul, hidden within, tells me that enduring those struggles would have paved my way towards Easy Street, undoubtedly. Life would have turned out a little simpler, more predictable, and provide greater comforts than the road I am currently traveling down – in the moment of completion. But would finishing those past failed commitments prevented life from challenging me at all farther down the way? Nope. Not at all.

Had those birds stuck around to finish what they started when the time to migrate arrived, whether they planned to follow the group or not, they very well might have been signing their own death warrants. Perfecting it’s nest or finding the ripest berry could leave them victim of the first freeze or a patient predator. The instinctual urge to move along to the next best thing, leaving prior commitments hanging in the balance, whispers to you with great purpose. Rationalizing the reasoning of Karma is preposterously unfeasible.

Listen to the desires of your soul and follow your heart wherever it may lead, as nature intended by your fate. Don’t look back on that which you left unfinished with guilt or shame, for it was what made you who you are today. Seek out new beginnings, instead. If something is calling you back to it, with the purest of intentions for the betterment of yourself, then start with a fresh slate – you are no longer the same person who made the original commitment.

The idea of recommital seems like another way for our psyche to carry the weight of the past into the future. If you take a peek, you will see that I’ve already surpassed my carry-on luggage allowance and left no room in the cargo deck for anyone else’s on this flight. Another suitcase might just crash this flight on The Curse Of Life airline.

This week 13 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts.  Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:
Baking In A Tornado             
Southern Belle Charm                      
Not That Sarah Michelle            
Spatulas on Parade                    
The Bergham Chronicles                    
The Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver Dinosaur Superhero Mommy            
My Brain on Kids                            
The Lieber Family Blog                  
Never Ever Give Up Hope                
Climaxed                                      
Confessions of a part time working mom