My Existential Crisis While Walking My Dog

I was walking my dog, Koda, on a cold, bleak January morning. Thinking of a new year, and my goals, when I realized how a lot of my goals that I had last year and year before and the year before that ...are the same ones I made this year. I realized I was fighting the same stupid battles every year. Obviously I am not winning, I thought, because I am still fighting them. And then my thought process spiraled into wondering really what is the purpose of life and improving. What am I doing with my life? Kind of like how I walk Koda every morning. We are just going in circles. What's the purpose of it all? I think every year this is the year I am gonna get healthy: physically and mentally. And yet here I am battling depression, anxiety and other struggles. Still. 

But then as I rounded the last corner of the block to come home I had a proverbial slap in the face. I realized that although some things are still the same, some things have changed. Good things.Things that perhaps I would not be able measure quantitatively, like relationships, personal and spiritual growth. By the time I was heading up the driveway back, my life felt, well, hopeful. 

And those battles that I'm still fighting every day, every week, every dang year...bring it on (I mean do I have a choice?) Because I realized, the battlefields may be the same, but perhaps I am becoming a different and better warrior. Because, perhaps it is in our battlefields where we grow, we become, and we discover the meaning of life.

A great book to teach about how problems can be seen as opportunities is 

What Do You with a Problem by Kobi Yamada