Marina Rose Travels

It’s funny to think about what you do have when everything in the world is reminding you about things that you don’t have. I don’t have the house or the car. I don’t have the dream job or the dream relationship. Some people would look at me and my life right now and wonder what in the world I do have. 

Why would you be grateful, when the world hasn’t offered you any of its luxuries? Why would you be grateful, when some people would look at your life and see it all as negatives? Why would you be grateful, when you’re barely standing on square Zero? 

I can see what they mean. I spent years looking at the world outside myself and looking for things to want. I want better clothes, a better car. If I could just afford better food or a trainer, if I was just a little smarter I could get that job, make my parents understand me, make myself proud…

It all hinged on the outside and right now, if I laid out the facts in front of you, it might seem pretty bleak. -$0.27 in one bank account, $20.00 in the other. -$5,500 of credit card debt (down from -$11,500 mind you), a car payment, and a personal loan payment every month. I tried to be smart about money, sold my 2018 Civic for a 2006 CR-V that’s needed $2,500 worth of fixes in the last 3 months alone. I live with 7 people, literally, 7. It’s a nice place, don’t get me wrong, but there’s no parking and one is a mess and the other is always at a party and who put their food on my shelf AGAIN?! 

My job is fine. Way better than teaching 8th graders English, I answer phones to take orders for snooty periodontists and jaded assistants and then I go home. To live with 7 people. And I have friends I see sometimes and I have friends I never talk to at all anymore. It’s all very medium but is it something to be grateful for? 

My new opinion is yes. I am wildly grateful for some kind of consistency in my life, even if it can be a little boring and yes even if someone keeps putting their soup on my shelf. It’s life and I’m 26 and anything is better than being a strung out alcoholic. A story for another day but yeah, life could be worse than medium. That’s why I’m using that word. Because fine means bad and good means okay and neither feels like the right way to describe being hopeful. 

People never answer the question, how was your day? With the answer “hopeful”. My life has the feeling of getting ready for something big, something great, something I have been working my whole life toward. When I wake up and I ask for help from the universe, I know that sometimes prayers take time to be answered. I wake up and put in my time because not every day is going to be the best one in the whole world, but I can live in peace with my life, even when there are so many things that I would change. 

The fact of the matter is that I accept my life is where it is. I am not on the highest mountain, I am in the learning river. I am making right moves and wrong moves and now after asking for God to Grant me the Serenity I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference” almost every day for 2+ years, I have to actually live the Serenity and Live the courage, while accepting that the wisdom is going to change like any ocean, like any living thing.