Do you ever stop and think about how different your life would be if you had (or, more interestingly to me, hadn't) done a certain thing, gone a certain place, talked to a certain person? I've spent a lot of time doing this (maybe too much), and I felt so understood a couple of months ago when I saw the musical If/Then in St. Louis. I encourage you to click here and listen while you read this post, whether you've seen the musical or not.
I'm two weeks away from my first half marathon, and this morning was my second to last long run (11 miles) before the race. I am the type of person who needs music when I run, so I'm always updating my Spotify running playlist with new tracks that get me inspired while I'm running. Today, I was excited when my favorite song from If/Then came on.
If you're not familiar with If/Then, here's the cliff notes: Forty-something woman in New York City sees the two totally different paths her life could take based on one simple decision. Absolutely captivating story, would highly recommend - but we'll save that for another time.
Back to the run. "Always Starting Over", Idina Menzel's power ballad from If/Then, came on - and it got me thinking. "Am I always starting over in a brand new story? Am I always back at one after all I've done?" This line. Wow. If we really give some thought to it, every moment, every decision, every new step we take is the start of a whole new adventure. A new path. Maybe even a new life, depending on the implications of the choice. Now if we think about this too much, life would probably just get too overwhelming - we wouldn't even be able to decide on an ice cream flavor or what pair of shoes to wear (side note: I admittedly have deliberated over both of these choices various times). But, if we think about it just enough, it is amazing, inspiring and maybe a little bit scary, too.
If we really are "always starting over" each day, is life one new opportunity after another or a fruitless and frustrating waste of time? It's hard to say definitively, which is what I love about the question this song poses. Coming from a person who was constantly told in grade school art class to "start over" because I messed up (again), it is hard to look at "starting over" as something positive. I've certainly been on both sides of that coin, and I'm pretty sure we all have. It's a sometimes you're the bug, sometimes you're the windshield kinda thing.
That being said, I absolutely love the way "Always Starting Over" ties this forehead-wrinkling ball of confusion together and seems to answer the question I posed above. "We can leave life for tomorrow or grieve all that we thought we'd do...or make each moment new." What a call to action - stare today in the face, and appreciate the fact that life allows us to start over every day if we so choose. So "starting over" doesn't mean defeat. Or failure. Or that you messed up your art project again. It means the chance to attach a new piece to the jigsaw puzzle of life.
All of this thinking distracted my body a bit from its physical exhaustion and turned the dial towards mental exercise - I think my feet really appreciated that. I will say, however, that it made it very hard to decide which way to turn at the next street corner.