Every now and then I like to pull out my old planners and take a look through them. I like to think looking back at them could help me appreciate the present or provide hope for the future. This week, I pulled out my 2017 planner to see what I did the week of April 20th.
The answer is that I played a lot of video games and watched a lot of TV shows when I wasn’t at work or in my college classes. Yet, something else caught my eye.
Down in the “Notes” section of my planner for that week, I wrote this:
“I fall and I trip. I cannot stand alone, but what is to be done?”
I wish I could tell you what I meant by that. I wish I knew the exact date I wrote that. Maybe I wrote it in my Foods class? I either have “boring” or nothing written for that class for the week. Maybe it was a quote from one of my video games or shows? But I’m sure I would’ve written down who said it if it was. Maybe I felt lonely? Looks like I didn’t hang out with anyone on the weekend.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could go back? If opening this planner was the equivalent to opening a door that week so I could sit myself down and figure out what was going on in my head back then? Let myself know that things will work out and your grades don’t define you. This was the year I would’ve graduated, so I’d flick myself in the head and tell me to take classes that would help with zookeeping instead of veterinary stuff. Classes like husbandry, hoof care, in depth nutrition, reptiles, and browsable plants. Yet, life would be too easy if our present selves could give our past selves a head’s up.
I may never know what I meant with that quote for my week in 2017. I can say I still fall and I still trip. I mean, I almost fell in a muddle pile trying to push a 400lbs tortoise today. No one can stand alone. We can try, but being alone is hard. So, what’s to be done? The answer sounds simple, but a lot of us would find it hard:
We gotta find our people.
Find people you can trust. Find people who will have your back. That you can call up to go out or hang in with a movie and chill. Find people who get you. Who like you and people you’d do the same for. Be someone others can trust. Someone who will have others’ back. Someone anyone can call to hang out. Be someone who gets your friends and who likes your friends.
Everyone deserves their own people. I hope we all get the chance to find them.
nikki diekemper 