Line of Sight: The Journey is the Destination
I am absolutely guilty of doomscrolling. There, I said it. Now that I have gotten that out of the way, I want to talk about an experience I had over on TikTok. I do not have a blog account over there, but a personal one and I enjoy watching others share their stories.
One day recently, a woman came across my “For You Page” and she broke my heart so much. She spoke in her videos about dealing with depression and low self-worth. She uses TikTok to find a community of support and I quickly jumped on that bandwagon.
The craziest thing to me is that this woman is wildly accomplished. Going through her profile, I was just in awe at her accolades as well as the things she talks about overcoming in her life. And yet, many of her posts share her struggles with feeling worthless and fighting to keep going. My heart just hurt for her because that used to be me.
Maybe it is the mother in me or just having lived a similar experience, but I couldn’t just scroll past this beautiful soul. After commenting encouraging words on several of her videos, we quickly began following each other. She does not respond to my comments, but does “heart” them. I am just happy to provide encouragement where it is needed.
As I doomscrolled today, however, I came across another video she recently posted updating about her life. She had many great things to say about progress she is making in a variety of areas in her life. Overall, it was a positive update and she should be so proud of all her progress. Unfortunately, she mentioned several times about how she wanted things for her future, wished they were now, and how she never thought she would be struggling like this at 30 years old. All the feels.
I decided to comment because my heart hurt hearing her almost dismiss her current accomplishments because she isn’t at her future goals, yet. Sometimes I just want to shake people out of their slumber so they can see what is happening right in front of them while they are dreaming. I decided not to “shake,” but to definitely help bring that perspective back to her. This is a portion of the comment that I left because I believe it will speak to you as well.
“Take things one day at a time and don’t get stuck in what the future ‘should’ look like. How do you want TODAY to look? You can only ever take the next first step, even in a marathon. But if you’re squinting to see the finish line from where you’re at, you will blur the beauty of what is in your line of sight now. Just focus on the next first step. As long as you keep taking that single step, you will get where you need to be when you need to be there.”