Bare Naked in Public

exploring life and love with pictures and words

You are almost there . . .

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Sitting crossed legged on my sofa, watching what I call crap TV, I pay my bills. It’s my method, my routine. My open wallet lies nearby, and I glance at my driver’s license, a fortune pressed between my picture and the plastic, YOU ARE ALMOST THERE. It’s been there for years, longer than I can remember. Even as I have purchased new wallets and transferred the contents of the old, or cleaned my wallet, purging old receipts and movie ticket stubs, the fortune always made the cut. It was important to me.

I’ve slid my driver’s license in and out for sales clerks, TSA officers, and bank tellers, each time carefully returning it to its proper place just under the fortune.  Sometimes I absent-mindedly flip open my wallet toward the inspecting eyes of the requester, forgetting the fortune is obscuring the license number or my date of birth. I am quickly reminded . . . umm I can’t, umm see the date? I squeeze my finger into the tight space, pushing the fortune so that the needed numbers can be seen.

Every now and then someone reads it aloud, YOU ARE ALMOST THERE. I feel compelled to tell them I’ve had it forever and that I thought at one time it had some important meaning, maybe it still does. My voice trails off as I wonder, why I am telling a random stranger about an old fortune tucked away in my wallet. Geez, I’ll talk to anyone. Whenever I engage in that way, I think of my mom. While shy, and even introverted, she felt comfortable quietly small-talking with strangers, one on one. I observed her doing this most of my life. I marveled at how people seemed genuinely interested in the little stories and musings she shared as she paid for groceries or dry cleaning. I loved watching her as she quietly captivated. I am neither quiet nor introverted, but I do love to share stories in the same way. I guess I come by it honestly.

So why did I keep this silly fortune? At the time, I believed it was my fortune. I WAS almost there! I do remember I was ending a relationship, and starting something new, again. Somehow in the moment, sitting in a Chinese restaurant and cracking open that cookie, brushing away the crumbs, removing the crumpled fortune and reading it aloud, I truly believed those words were my destiny. Life was going to turn around for me. I had made my last mistake. The fortune cookie had spoken! God, I hope and pray that I am not the only person on the planet whose mind works like this.

As the weeks, months and years rolled by the meaning of the little fortune had evolved. Once a bold statement of “all good things are within your reach” to “work a little harder there is farther than you thought”, to “Shit, where the hell is there and how the hell do you get there?” I wasn’t obsessed with the fortune, but it did stare me in the face every day. It certainly made me think, until one day I realized . . . I never defined there. Wow. I thought I would simply recognize it when I arrived.

These days I no longer look for there as the big ta-dah, or a final destination. There is a vision that lives in my head and my heart. It is defined, yet I refine it often. My words, my actions, my work and my life, all at the same time, both shape and reflect my vision . . . my there.  As for the almost . . . well, the almost is the journey, and the journey never ends.

I feel sure that if my mom had a fortune stashed away in her wallet, she would have shared the story with a stranger. We should all share our stories, our fortunes.

My fortune is a gentle reminder of my journey, and yep . . . it’s still in my wallet.

xoc

22 Responses to “You are almost there . . .”

  2. thegirldish

    You are not the only one! I keep fortunes that “speak to my heart” and i think it is awesome that you shared this with us.
    I liked how you said you never defined “there”. In yoga class, my teacher always says, “yoga is a practice. You never reach a point where you stop learning – and if you get there, you’re not doing yoga.”
    So i take that as there is no destination to arrive at.
    I think you captured that in this post and i love it because it was in a “non yoga” way that i could relate to lol
    Thabks for sharing!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  3. SilverGirl

    Beautiful and an important message .. I’m just learning this now, and I can understand why I’ve been miserable with my very high expectations..
    The key to my happiness isn’t somewhere in the future – I can be happy right now even if my life is far from what I considered or imagined it would or should be. I always wondered what those quotes meant… like ‘learn to sing in the rain’.. x

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    • Bare Naked in Public

      All these life lessons. I often wished I had learned them earlier but the Universe had other plans. The learning happens when the student is ready. Right? Life is never boring. 🙂

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      Reply
  7. Capeless1

    With each passing day I am clearer that there is here lived one day at a time, the collection of well-lived “nows”. Thanks for sharing the memory of your mom, and an honest reflection of your own growth. To HERE!

    Liked by 1 person

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  9. armsakimbobook

    Wonderful. I love what you say about sharing our stories. My mom did that, and people always responded well. I do it, and have the same experience. My 15 year-old daughter is mortified, and constantly tells me to be quiet. “Nobody cares, Mama.” She’s wrong, of course. And right, for her age. I’m sure she’ll be a story-teller too, in another 20 years. Maybe less.
    ~Audrey

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      • Dan

        Yeah. Didn’t you get you secret decoder ring yet? Actually, you are shown in my followers as following me for the last two weeks. You may not be getting the post emailed to you.

        I am a subscriber to my blog just to make sure there are emails when I publish a new post and a few posts back, I stopped getting mails. This may be the problem OR if you rely on the WordPress reader, Blogs I Follow, the new post did not appear on the reader either. A WordPress snafu. Really annoying when you work so hard on a post and it doesn’t publicize.

        Try backing up your subscription by going to my blog and on the black bar at the top of the post, click the + sign by the work “Follow”. It will show a bubble saying this post will now appear in your reader and the + will change to a check mark by the word “Following.” Let me know if you have any more trouble. I have blogs I follow and get nothing in the reader or my emails. I just try to remember to periodically check them.

        Liked by 1 person

      • Dan

        This also. If you ARE using the WordPress Reader, go into the reader and there is a box on the upper left corner of the page. The first line is “Blogs I Follow”. Click the word “Edit there. All the blogs you follow should come up there. Where you see mine, under the name of the blog it may say “You get no post and no comment emails for this blog” If so, click the blue word “edit” at the end of that line.
        Under the words “Send new posts by email” click “Instantly”. Under the words “Send new comments by email:” click “On”. Both boxes should highlight blue and that should take care of it.

        Liked by 1 person

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