“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.”

I’ve struggled with this quote from Marcus Aurelius in the context of the stoic philosophy of making the best of every situation, good or bad, and not letting things become larger or worse in your mind than they are in reality. At face value, this line reads like a Carpe Diem commission: Seize the Day! Don’t waste a second! Don’t miss out!

If you know me at all, you’re probably pretty well aware that FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out, for all of you acronymally challenged folks and/or baby boomers out there reading this) has historically been a driving value in my life, since my earliest homeschooling days when I realized All The Fun I was missing in public school where boys made dirty jokes and girls changed best friends more often than their underwear.

My FOMO has faded since I have experienced… well, a lot of things, including dirty jokes and unchanged underwear, and I’ve discovered the bliss of a couch full of dogs and a Person of Interest - but even as that anxiety takes a back seat, I am keenly aware of the shortness and frailty of life, the unguaranteedness of all of it, and how necessary it is to do the important things while we can.

The Stoics weren’t much into that FOMO business, so what did ol’ MA mean when he said this? It certainly wasn’t some hedonistic missive to tear it up and get you Clubbin’ on, just in case it was your last chance. Based on the context and his other writings, it wasn’t even some entrepreneurial command to “make hay while the sun shines.”

I’ve wrestled with what Memento Mori - the state of constant awareness of the frailty of life - means in the middle of the doldrums of a cubicle-bound Monday. Nothing feels like more of a waste of time than the constant refresh of email inboxes, social media feeds and planning to plan meetings about meetings about planning documents to plan agendas for planning events for some grand plan that might ultimately never come to fruition anyway, or be shot down by lack of funding, or even worse, lack of vision in a community. How can I sit here and do this knowing that any moment could be my last? How?

Marcus Aurelius had his own cubicle-bound Monday doldrums, there’s no doubt about it. This dude served as Emperor of one of the greatest civilizations that the world has known, only after decades of intensive study and grooming. There had to be a thousand moments that little Marky was staring off into the dancing poplar trees, daydreaming of Dryads and Nymphs, wondering what all the greek and latin gibberish was worth anyhow. What he discovered in those scrolls and daydreams wasn’t a way to escape to a new and exciting way to waste his time - he learned to maximize the thing in front of him. He learned to suck as much life out of that marble cubicle and those rolls of parchment as he possibly could. There was no avoiding the responsibility that his birth and education allocated to him, and so he decided to master every lesson delivered to him, and let it shape not only him, but the nation he would one day rule.

Maybe Marcus wasn’t talking about how frail life was, but how changeable. Maybe it’s not life in general that you could leave right now, but life specifically. Maybe the cubicle life is about to end and there’s something in that plan to plan that you’re gonna need outside of those closing-in-on-you Monday walls.

I am striving to own the place where I am, the life I am in, in this moment, and get the most out of it - and on beautiful summer days, staring at two monitors and a lot of foreign information that does little to stir my soul, it’s a workout. I need to complain less and seek more growth, because the hard stuff is usually the stuff I need the most, and maybe sitting still is the toughest thing I’ll say I’ve ever done in my life.

My two-monitor days won’t last forever, but it’s imperative that I get out of them what I need for the life beyond. So that’s the standard by which I should be measuring what I do and say and think. I need to see what I am missing out on right in front of me, because it won’t last.

When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a sailor. I wanted to join the navy, like my dad, but mostly because I really liked the hats and I had this adorable sailor-suit romper that I remember wearing on my 8th birthday, when I unwrapped my very first bible from mom and dad. That bible is filled with scribbled notes, especially one giant highlighted one, announcing the fact that “I WILL DISCOVER THE ARK OF THE COVENANT!” - the next of my future ambitions, archaeology, and one that would circle back around later in my life.

The only colleges that I applied to during my senior year (at home) were bible colleges with mission aviation programs. I wanted to fly planes into jungles and drop important things that tribal people needed, like bibles. I met a girl who fought fire and thought it was the baddest ass thing that I could Never Do. But I told God to send me anywhere, the remotest, most destitute place on earth for Him, I was ready.

Growing up, I don’t remember imagining a family, or kids. If any thought of offspring crossed my mind, I could imagine tolerating a small herd or rowdy boys. I remember only one specific thing about a wedding that I wanted: a ride in a sleigh with a red velvet, fur-trimmed cape. Instead I got married in October between two bonfires, surrounded by torches and a church congregation hand-clapping to one of my least favorite church songs EVER.

I never fantasized about the little blonde girls in princess dresses and cowboy hats that would fill my life from the age of 19 until now. I never imagined canning quarts of peaches or cooking casseroles. I never planned out the domestic bliss that was in store for me. I had fantasies of dorm rooms and best friends and road trips with loud music and lots of snacks, not an SUV covered with crushed Goldfish Crackers and a steady diet of Rice and Beans and cheap Macaroni and Cheese.

I had waited anxiously for 17 years to meet the One Man that I would spend my life with, traveling the world, studying intellectuals and philosophers, tromping through ancient ruins and up breathtaking mountainsides. I never could have anticipated what was actually in store. At 17 I was too young to see it coming, and it’s a good thing, cause I might have bailed. And then where would I be? God sent me to Northport. He gave me four little girls and a dud of a marriage. You don’t get much more remote or destitute. But you do get adventure.

When my kids were born, I guess I was too preoccupied with survival to spend time imagining what they’d be when they grew up. Now I know that it would have been a silly waste of time, because these four are nothing I could have seen coming. Wild and brilliant, beautiful and weird, if my life was never anything more than the ledge those four needed to jump off in to the world, it was worth it.

Every turn in my life has been a surprise. Some tragic, some amazing, and all of them necessary. There is no point of my life that has turned out how I pictured it. Sure, I studied some anthropology and even did some archaeology work. I’ve fought the fires. I’ve been on the road trips, but it’s usually my kids riding shotgun in the SUV with the loud music and the crushed Goldfishes. I didn’t land the One Man for my Whole Life (yet). But I’ve done more than my share of tromping and traveling without him, and with plenty of other amazing people.

I never got to be a sailor, but I get to work with a few and I love them AND their hats. I actually did drop bibles in a jungle, just not from a plane, and it taught me more about what I was in need of than the people who lived there. I’ve canned peaches and studied philosophers and met heroes and poured beers and drank whiskeys with greater human beings than I ever thought I’d get to meet.

The Surprise of My Life IS my life, with all of its twists and turns, with four little women who are four times the woman I could have dreamed. Every day is another surprise, and just when I start thinking I might know what’s coming next, life comes up with a better idea, and I’m ok with it. Wonder what’s next?