A while back, I wrote a column about how I used to hate it as a child when my mother would rearrange the furniture.
I didn't like change -- not in the living room and not anywhere else. I also avoided risk. You'd never find me climbing to the top of the fire pole on the playground. No, I stayed on the ground where I felt safe, wouldn't scuff my shoes and no one would be able to see up my plaid jumper.
That pretty much held into adulthood. But the older I got, I came to realize that things are going to change whether I want them to or not.
When you stop and take a mental snapshot of your life and the people in it, and compare it to snapshots from, say, a decade or two or three ago, it's not at all the same. Beloved grandparents are gone. Tiny children are all grown up.
Too many of us have wedding albums showing two people promising "as long as we both shall live," when now, we know, it wasn't.
As for risk, I've taken to heart what the self-help books say about positive thinking and believing in yourself. Boiled down, it's nothing more than the old-fashioned, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained."
And some of us reach a point where we realize that leaving everything exactly the same is not the right thing. In fact, doing that can actually hamper personal growth, satisfaction, financial stability or some combination of those.
That brings me to the point of today's column. I've been writing weekly like this for about 15 years, monthly for a few years before that, and feel I've come to know you collectively -- and a lot of you individually -- in that time. Many of us have traveled the road of parenthood together. When I started, my youngest kid was in kindergarten; now she'll be a senior in college. We've shared losses of close loved ones and the foibles of harried homemaking; struggles with weight and rants over unfairness.
Now I've been laying the groundwork to start a business and it's time to take the plunge. I will say that the significance of the library's shelving the books on "Filing for Bankruptcy" right next to the ones on "Starting Your Own Business" is not lost on me.
But something happened to the little girl who didn't want the furniture moved and would never shimmy up the fire pole: Life.
If I were to write a book about all of this, it might be titled, "Jumping Off a Cliff" -- or more aptly, "Moving the Furniture (While Jumping Off a Cliff)."
All I'm hoping is that I don't land under the piano.
Reach Kathy Gibbons at kgibbons@record-eagle.com
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