This Week’s Life Lesson: July 2, 2023

When I was in 8th grade, I went to an Aztec rally with my friend, Laura, and her family in the mountains of New York. Aztecs are a flashback from the past, huh? That rally taught me a really important life lesson. 

We were trying to get to the volleyball courts, but there was only one bridge to cross the “creek”. It wasn't quite as small as a creek, but not as big as a river. For simplicity, we’ll call it a creek.  The problem - a wedding was happening at the bridge of the creek. 

My solution? Go downstream from the wedding and jump to the middle of the creek to a little “island” and then jump to the other side. Typing this now, it doesn’t even sound like a good idea. Every individual with me that evening told me not to jump. They were not going to follow and they did not think it was a good idea. I should also note, I am not known to be graceful. In fact, I’ve broken many bones, fallen up escalators, and had my fair share of “now laughable” moments. 

I took a big leap. The kind of leap long jumpers take in the olympics. At least it felt like that to me. As I was mid-air my friend yelled “don’t jump, it’s a bad idea”. She was and is a smart young lady. I landed like a long jumper, two feet on the island. I was happy as a clam and proud of myself.  

Then immediately, like a domino in slow motion, I fell face first into the water in front of me that looked like and smelled like sewer. This crap smelling mud was all over my clothes, my hair, in my teeth and my ears. I was covered. Before I could get done in the bath house that evening, the entire rally camp knew what happened and I was known as sewer girl.

This is the interesting part. Even if I made it to the other side, no one else was coming with me. None of them had the desire to jump across the sewer creek. Some would say that if I made it across they probably would have jumped too, but I really don’t think that is the case.

In life, you have to think about your end goal before you make a decision or take a long jump sized leap of faith. The real end goal. Not just what quickly appears to be the end goal. My end goal was to play volleyball with my friends. They were not coming with me even if I made it. I didn’t have the dang volleyball with me either. There was no reason for me to jump. I was so set on achieving the goal of getting to the volleyball court that I let out the details of needing my friends to be there with the ball to play the game.

This Week’s Life Lesson: Know what your true end goal is before you jump into action.Don’t waste your time, energy, or money on actions that look like progress, but have no true impact on pushing you to achievement.