The Time of Our Lives?

Link Year Week 9:

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what people call their “peak” in life. A peak is the term people use to describe the highest point that they achieve in their life weather that means highest point socially or professionally or artistically, etc. Will I know my life hits its peak or will I only be able to see it after I’ve already lived it? The difficulty is that life is a constant ebb and flow of positive and negative experiences, admittedly it seems like life more consistently has more of the latter for most people. Life always seems to throw a curve in just as you were finding your lane. While this definitely keeps life interesting I have often pondered a life with no curves, a life where you can live without ups or downs and instead cruise in a simple, straight forward lifestyle. Are the downs worth the ups? Are the ups made better by the downs? Would a life of happy medium anesthetize us and cause us to become bored with life. If there are lessons to be learned in the downs that enable us to find our ups then couldn’t they seem like a necessary negative? Theres this really cliche saying I’ve seen around that says something to the tune of “a ship may be safe in the harbor but it was never meant to stay there” and while I often dismiss it as a kitchy saying there is a lot of truth to it. We as humans are meant to endure trials, we are not supposed to live a life in a monotonous state. We are meant to weather the storms so that we can enjoy the sunrise that much more. Our downs form who we are and our ups allow us to look back and see how far we’ve come and prepare for the next storm.

A drive on a straight highway will very quickly get boring but some of the most memorable trips I’ve ever taken wind their way around rugged cliffs and through canyons and over mountains, and thats the thing about life, you can never see whats around the next corner. But isn’t that the fun of life? It keeps you on your toes and takes away your ability to say you made it as far as you did on your own strength. A life well lived will include formative and infamous storms that make for unreal moments in life where everything is calm, you can thank God for the struggle and rest in the calm before the next storm.