Week #315 – “Roll Me Away!” (Listen to your longings this week!)

Good Afternoon, Everyone — and Happy Friday!

Many of you know that my partner Jim’s father was accidentally hit and killed last week while crossing the street in his beloved Jersey Shore town. The same town where this photo was taken…and many good memories were made.

Jim Sr. always saw to that!

As I was reflecting on all the great memories we made there, I was reminded of this post from Week #161. It was a full year after our move to Los Angeles and I was still taking care of some long-overdue to-dos. And while I had gotten quite a few important and somewhat urgent things done — one thing slipped through the cracks completely: my motorcycle endorsement. And I wasn’t happy about it.

(And now, I’m REALLY not happy about it!)

I had always wanted to get a motorcycle license. And while many of my practice hours were logged with Rob by my side, Jim Sr. was the one who made it happen. He was the first to get me ON a bike. The first to show me how to walk it gently up and down the street and how to roll the throttle and practice turns on his quiet little cul de sac. He let Rob take me out for practice run after practice run on those sandy shore roads. And in the end, he gifted Jim and I with a rider’s education course to make sure we really knew how to ride safely (in November…the coldest class EVER!).

When I moved to California in 2016, I had a year to take the written test again in order to transfer the endorsement.  The year passed. I never retested. The endorsement went away.

I know that in the grand scheme of things…this isn’t important.  There was some really sad, complicated, and important issues going on in our world when I first wrote this post…and they are still going on now.  But it was my brother (and Jim Sr.) who taught me to ride.  Who helped me achieve a life-long dream of getting my license and riding solo!  That “M” represented an awful lot of Rob…and Jim Sr.

And now they’re both gone.

And while there is part of me that’s REALLY not happy about the fact that I let my endorsement slip…there is another part that knows I will take another class, I will retest, and I will ride again!

And I’ll think of BOTH of them as I “Roll Me Away!”

Try as we might…we can’t be perfectly happy all the time.  Longing is part of the human condition…it’s what keeps us dreaming, keeps us envisioning, keeps us journeying to find out what’s beyond that next bend in the road…and then over those hills…and then out further along that plain…

…and, once again Bob Seger’s words will come flooding back: “Next time…we’ll get it right!”

Your Happyness Challenge for the Week Ahead:  When you come across something you “aren’t happy about” — don’t just settle for unhappiness!  Identify the longing…and use it to get focused on what you want.  And it doesn’t hurt to add a theme song to inspire you!  When I was leaving my corporate job, I listened to Boston’s “Don’t Look Back” every single day on my way to work to remind me that my future was AHEAD of me…not behind me!  Now, once again, it will be Bob Seger’s “Roll Me Away” as I set off to recover my endorsement…this year or next!

Whatever it is for you…listen to your longings! (And tell me your theme song in the comments!)

Spread Happyness — listen to your longings this week!

9/25/20 by Grace Church
© Grace Church
grace@spreadhappyness.com