Today I’ve decided to share an excerpt from the chapter of the same title in my soon to be released book “Embrace Your Destiny: 12 Steps to living the life you deserve”. I hope you enjoy it! Please feel free to comment and leave feedback 🙂 ~ Sandra
Chasing – it’s something we have fun doing when we’re kids. We chase each other on the playground in a game of tag, or we chase each other when we’ve got something gross in our little hands and we want to freak out our friends with it. Either way, when we’re young, chasing is fun, and it never enters our mind that we won’t be able to catch up to whatever it is we are chasing. We may be running for a long time, but we’re certain that at some point we’re going to catch our target, even if we have to fake “giving up” and get them by surprise later! As we get older, however, chasing loses its entertainment value. The things we chase mean more to us. We perceive our targets to be worth more, and no matter how bad we want them, they seem to run further and further away from us. Whether we’re chasing love, money, power or dreams, it can often feel like we’re running on a treadmill, getting nowhere fast. I’ve heard it said that there are two things you should never chase in life: men and buses (because there’s always another one coming). I used to think that this was just a funny saying, but as time went on, I came to understand some truth in the statement.
I remember a day in high school when I was watching a girl run for the bus. It was a cold winter day and she was one of those girls who was always dressed to the nines. She was wearing these stylish knee-high boots, with heels and all, and there were patches of ice on the roads. I guess the sidewalks weren’t much better, which is why she was walking on the road in the first place. When she saw the bus coming she started to run. Of course the combination of the stylish boots and icy roads resulted in a terrible fall on her derriere, which of course left those of us at the bus stop and on the bus bursting out in laughter. While I was guilty of laughing, I also remember being mortified for the girl who had just been so humiliated running for the bus. It was then that I decided I would never chase a bus in order to spare myself a similar type of embarrassment. It’s a shame I didn’t think to carry that lesson on to other parts of my life until later!
I’ve chased a lot of things in my life as an adult, with little success. I’ve chased my fair share of relationships, and it took a long time for me to realize that chasing really wasn’t getting me what I wanted – a fulfilling, happy relationship. There was a time when it seemed like everyone had somebody but me. I longed for the intimacy that I saw others experience in romantic relationships. This didn’t mean that I was on a man hunt per se, but it did mean that once I started dating someone, it wasn’t long before I was thinking of our future in a long-term relationship, with kids and the proverbial white picket fence. Now, if you’ve ever found yourself in this predicament, you know that it is usually a surefire way to chase a man away from you, not bring him closer. No one wants to hear the “Where do you think this is going?” question after the second date! I had no concept of allowing things to develop organically. In my early twenties, I had a timeline of when things should happen: when I should get married, have kids and live in a dream home. As it turns out, none of those things happened according to my original plans, and now that I’m on the cusp of forty, I realize that the things I thought were going to make my life complete twenty years ago, are not the same things I believe will make my life complete today.