I had all of these fitness resolution blogs planned for the month of January, but a repeated message from the universe is making my fingers redirect their path across the landscape of my keyboard.
It's becoming very clear to me that my lesson in this lifetime is that life can change in an instant.
I have gone about my business for 35 years constantly reacting to this phenomenon. I've chosen to be flexible in terms of adjusting my personal life plan for the people who are dear to me. When circumstance has made it necessary for me to be in one place or another to support my loved ones, I am instantly on a plane, train or automobile to be there to help.
Sometimes you cannot plan everything. The outcome is unknown. Life can throw a curve ball at you so fast you never see it coming.
That's what happened to one of our close family members two weeks ago. The picture of health and an active lifestyle, this 60-year-old "can-do" guy had a sudden, massive, physically debilitating stroke. He went from a "normal" life to an unknown prognosis in just moments. And so did the lives of his loved ones.
All plans seem up in the air. Everyone has had to adjust to this new reality and to digest what will be a much different day-to-day life for this previously independent man.
I visit the hospital each day and see families like ours, dealing with illness, whether sudden or progressive, a mystery or fully diagnosed, emotions plastered across their faces and expressed in their body language. The worry, the stress, the anger, the despair. The hope, the strength, the love, the prayer.
I can also see them modifying their game plan, accepting the circumstances and calibrating their new trajectory. Their situations make trivial mush of my daily worries, my perfectionist obsessions and disciplined routine.
There are also brighter moments that can transform us forever. It's not just tragedy that can provide drastic life alterations, but surely certain unforeseen joyful events can redirect where you were going. Winning the lottery, an unexpected promotion at work, meeting the love of your life.
The lesson I'm digesting from all of this, as elementary and maybe even cheesy as it sounds, is to live in the present moment, to really be where I am and experience it fully. (Not an easy quest for a woman who constantly multitasks everything from professions to daily tasks.)
I've read countless self-help books that tout this theory, practice meditation and yoga which are based on this premise and yet, it takes personal life experience for it to resonate boldly.
When life taps you on the shoulder ... you might just have to turn around, steer in another direction and accept your new path.
If you spend your time looking into the future or stuck in the past – you will miss what is happening right now.
And you never know when right now is going to change.
Lindsay Garric is a Milwaukee native who calls her favorite city home base for as long as her lifestyle will allow her. A hybrid of a makeup artist, esthetician, personal trainer and entrepreneur all rolled into a tattooed, dolled-up package, she has fantasies of being a big, bad rock star who lives in a house with a porch and a white picket fence, complete with small farm animals in a version of Milwaukee that has a tropical climate.
A mishmash of contradictions, colliding polar opposites and a dash of camp, her passion is for all pretty things and the products that go with it. From makeup to workouts, food to fashion, Lindsay has a polished finger on the pulse of beauty, fashion, fitness and nutrition trends and is super duper excited to share that and other randomness from her crazy, sexy, gypsy life with the readers of OnMilwaukee.com.
