Ladder of Dreams

There are moments when life wants to speak to you. Maybe it’s when you wake up, or during an afternoon nap that you thought you would take, but then your mind decided to wander. Or, in my case lately, it’s when I’m sitting in my car in a busy parking lot, more comfortable watching others. Maybe it’s the distractions. In all the movement around you, your stillness is trying to speak. What are you saying to me? Why is this happening? What do I do, or what’s the next move?

Right now, all I know is that it’s not moving the things piled up in the seat next to me, out of my car, and up three flights of stairs. So, I stay comfortable. And in that moment, if I’m not on the phone with someone who loves me, I'm surely contemplating my entire life or existence in a span of maybe 45 minutes. Honest, I'm doing this if I am on the phone. Thank you, mom and best friend.

For someone who’s been doing corporate work for years, climbing the ladder to success (which I swear is always missing the top rung), I’m finding myself back at the place where choosing what I want is more important than proving myself or my abilities to a company that hardly knows my soul, who I am, or what makes me exceptional in the first place. I ask myself, “What is it all for if you aren’t happy?”

And if I’m getting real, currently, I’m not happy. I listened to a podcast recently and realized that if I scored the areas of my life on a scale of 1-10, or 1-5 (you get the picture), what areas would I work on the most? Career, health, relationships, family. The only one I scored high enough to be satisfied with was work. And let me tell you, not because it’s flawless, but because opportunity, pay, and ability are all high.

But where’s the fulfillment? It’s in the part of me, and the energy I give away daily, to climb the ladder that never reaches where I thought I was going. So I watch others in this parking lot and can’t help but think I’m living a life on repeat. And that part is scarier than falling off the ladder—while, truthfully, being afraid of heights. Except that part’s true, too. I’m afraid of heights.

Those dreams we leave out there in the scary heights of our imagination and the depths of our soul—what if that’s the ladder we should be climbing? In fact, I know it is.

I’m so thankful for the pause in the parking lot that allows my mind to say, “Maybe it’s time to be happy.” Not because of opportunity, money, or perceived success while building someone else’s dream—and more like it’s time to take a few steps back on the ladder, and pick your own dreams back up…