Julio's Musings

Depth Perception – the ability of an observer to judge the spatial relationships of objects, especially their relative distance from the observer and from one another.

As things happen in life and you’re taken on a journey you may or may not want to be on, it’s not always easy to really view what’s around you. Sometimes you react too quickly because you see things coming at you faster than they are. Other times, you don’t react at all because you couldn’t see something coming that was right in front of you. Depth perception is always one of the keys to getting through life. The way you perceive the world around you, being able to see the obstacles in your path and having the ability to fully react to them safely as you move your life forward is one of the hardest things to get right.

A lot of this post was originally in my previous post, but I wanted to figure out these thoughts a bit more. I started out that post by talking about how I’m at the point where I’m feeling less stuck.  I spent so much time feeling like I was in this huge rut and it seemed as if I would never get out of it. I kept looking around me and seeing people advancing and I always felt as if I couldn’t move. It was a pretty horrible and unhappy feeling.

So what changed? Basically I started to realize that it had become a self-induced rut. I wasn’t stuck because there were forces somehow constantly working against me. I was stuck because I stopped trying to get myself out of it. I stopped fighting for myself and what I wanted. That’s not to say that there weren’t external things that happened in between that forced me to pause for a little bit of time. Life always throws those types of things in there. The problem was that at some point I never eventually continued my journey forward after those things occurred.

I often get remarks from people wondering why I’m still in school. Pretty much everyone thinks “Holy crap, you should have finished a long time ago!” You know, that’s probably true. For whatever reason college has never gone easily for me. I started out at a place I didn’t really like attending, though I did love working there. After a year there I went to a community college and spent a couple years there trying to figure out what to do for a career. What was unpleasant about that was that 1) I felt so lost the entire time with no real sense of direction and 2) my advisors weren’t the best and I ultimately left there a few credits short of an Associate Degree because they kept making mistakes with the classes i should be taking. After that experience I transferred to a university and really liked it there. Life, however, threw me some curve balls that I couldn’t hit and I ended up losing a year and a half worth of school. I never regretted the choices I had to make during that time, though I wish I could have found a way to make it work in a better way. And I am now here today, back in school and working to finally get that Bachelor’s Degree. 

I felt completely stuck so much of that time trying to get an education. It really felt like I was not meant to finish, never destined to be a college graduate, and never to have a decent career. It took until this year for that feeling to be gone. I made the decisions I needed to make, took all the steps needed to make those decisions come to fruition, and I finally stopped standing still waiting for something to push my life forward. And now sometime next year I’ll finally be able to get the diploma I’ve been longing for. It’s still a bit of a road to travel and it’s not going to be a hassle free super easy experience, but that’s okay. I’m finally able to keep going and handle it.

Everyone feels stuck at some point. Some feel completely trapped with their job, with their family, with school, with love, and sometimes they feel stuck for reasons they aren’t even sure of. Feeling stuck in the love department is probably something everyone can relate to at some point or another. I’m reminded of a Kelly Clarkson song (yes I can relate a lot of things to a Kelly Clarkson song) called “Where is Your Heart” where Kelly says: “And I’ve always dreamed that love would be effortless, like a petal falling to the ground, a dreamer following his dream.” I’ve always wished love could be as easy as that, but it usually never is. This year has definitely been a reminder to me of how incredibly hard love can be. You put your whole self into something that has a high probability of causing pain. It’s something that gets harder before it gets easier, a bit like, well, everything else we do in life. But when it goes right, it can be one of the greatest things you’ll ever have. You just have to keep working at it and let it naturally evolve. For most, it’s a process that you’ll go through with many different people until you find the one that’s just right. I haven’t found that just yet myself, and I’ve spent the majority of the year pretty sure that I never would, but now I think that perhaps I actually will at some point. I don’t know when or with who and I’m not even looking for it anymore. But one day it’ll come.

I haven’t talked about what I think is one of the most important keys to moving forward: the need to let go. Holding onto things can become anchors that won’t allow you to move forward. Whether it’s anger, ideas, people, or whatever you’re holding onto, you cannot do anything unless you release your grip. It’s not easy, but it is necessary. One of the key lyrics in the Kelly Clarkson (there I go again) song I talked about in my last post called “Sober” is “Nothing’s real until you let go completely.” It’s such a true statement. Holding on for dear life to something you shouldn’t can warp your sense of reality. You begin to rationalize the irrational. It tricks you into not moving forward because you believe the illusion to be real. Some hold onto that illusion out of fear of what’s real or, perhaps, fear that they can never make the real as good as the illusion. But life can be as good as you want it to be. It’s a bit cliché, I know, but that’s pretty much how it is.

And so I say again: The way you perceive the world around you, being able to see the obstacles in your path and having the ability to fully react to them safely as you move your life forward is one of the hardest things to get right. But, as I’m finally learning now, it is completely possible to do.