True Life

I just finished reading a book by Anne Tyler called
'Back When We Were Grownups".

I'm not about to write a book report in hopes that you'll give me a yellow smiley face. I will tell you that Anne Tyler writes books about nothing. Two hundred pages of ink about ordinary people's lives. No murder, no scandalous affairs or chases through the Vatican. Just a frumpy fifty-year-old woman trying to figure out what the freak happened to her life. I loved this book. I laughed out-loud in the middle of the night while I sneakily tried to conceal my nose in the book binding. I cried at this part at the end of the book when a one hundred year old man named Poppy says:

"There is no true life. Your true life is the one you end up with, whatever it may be. You just do the best you can with what you've got."

That's true, isn't it? It's not that life isn't magical and wonderful. But at some point all of us are walking down the street one day and stop to think, "What the freak happened to my life? This isn't what I always planned." Whether we didn't end up in the career we'd planned or dirty diapers didn't end up being as adorable as we imagined, most of us come to a point where we start looking at our compass and try to figure out how we ended up where we are.

This book about nothing reminded me that this is my true life. It's the only one I'm ever going to get in all of eternity, so I better buck up and have a ball. Most of the time we end up exactly where we're supposed to. It's just about realizing that and doing the very best with what we've got. Your true life isn't somewhere in the shadows. It's right where you are.

You are your true life.