Considering Someday

     We make promises to ourselves, and we break them.  We feel guilty, and the guilt can even eclipse the real consequences of the broken promise.  Guilt, or the threat of it, is a tool we use to keep ourselves on task, but that tactic can turn on us.  Too many broken promises, and you learn not to make them.  It's hard to make the leap from "want" to "goal" when you're afraid you're not good enough to get it done.  So you stay where it's safe, and you sacrifice the possibility of accomplishment to "someday."

     Here's the truth that you need to swallow before you can make good things happen in your life:

You are destined to fail.

You will promise yourself things that you won't be able to deliver.  You will set goals you never reach.  It may be circumstances beyond your control that knock you off that ladder; it may be that the timing wasn't right for success, but you will fail.

Sometimes.

and then, sometimes, you won't.

     Sometimes, you will achieve everything you set out to do.  Only by accepting the possible failures will you have the courage to make room for the successes.

     I've seen others I know overcome fears and accomplish their goals.  Some chose skydiving or driving to South Dakota alone despite warnings and worries of others.  Some braved mortal fears in the course toward something they dearly wanted to do, and others with no less courage faced fears of rejection or inadequacy to apply for a job or audition for a show.  Each must have thought about that possibility of not making it to the finish line, but set the goal anyway.  To not try would have been a failure without a chance of success.

     My own situation doesn't carry a catastrophic risk, but setting the goal has been a hurdle nonetheless.  The promise has been made before, and it's something I have failed to accomplish time and again.  When I was seventeen, I spent a few months in Japan as part of an exchange program.  I lived with a host family, made friends at school, and really felt that I had a home there.  The experience was life-changing, and I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to make those connections.  I traveled on a scholarship then, and when it came time to go home, there were two goals in my mind.  Someday, when I was in a stable financial position, I would repay the kindness shown me by hosting an exchange student myself, and someday, I would return to visit my new family again.

     It was reasonable to think that after a few years out in the world, I'd be able to budget for a trip back.  I was bright enough and willing to work hard, and I had no intention of starting a family right away.  Managing my expenses would be easier than it had been for my parents.  But life had plenty to sidetrack me from the plan.  When I was married, my host parents suggested I bring my husband to visit someday.  It was a new goal, but one I would see fall apart as things got more complicated with a baby and then a divorce.  In any case, the years of that first marriage were never stable enough to make international travel possible.  Later, when the road was a bit smoother, raising three kids took priority, and while we weren't struggling as much, arranging the trip for five was beyond our means.  A couple of decades past that original vow, I had still failed to keep the promise I made to myself.  We did host a student one summer, but my hope of returning to Japan was dwindling.

     One autumn, my sister from my host family, now an adult, visited us, and again I dared to consider the return visit.  Our kids were nearly all adults and would get along fine if my husband and I traveled for a week or two.  But at that point, my husband had been laid off and had just begun selling real estate.  In a year or two, we promised, when he had established his business, we would be stable enough to go.  We hadn't counted on the real estate market collapsing.  So, I was back at the start, having quietly failed again, and leaving the idea to someday.  A lifetime can get lost in someday.  Without a goal, a promise, and a plan, you can never fail, but someday never comes either.

     I think it's time to make the promise again, step one toward making it real.  There is still room to fail.  Who knows what emergencies will crop up that could undo the plan, but I can't be afraid of that.  It will take planning and saving, but that would never happen if I left it all in dream stage.  So, this is the declaration:

Before two years have passed, someday will be here.