things that make me happy from a book im embarrassed to own

life is not meant to be linear. the path from birth to death is not a straight-line journey; its a zig-zag... the linear point of view says first get an education, the work hard, then retire so you can finally begin living. but by that time, many people have forgotten how to live, or else they're so exhausted by getting to where they've gotten that there's no life left. the alternative is to live all your life as fully as possible. to challenge the existing script. to wander as opposed to sticking to the straight and narrow. of course, this is scary and isn't easy, as it means we have to continually ask questions about our life, our love, our work.
lets face it:if the average life span of a person is, say, seventy years, one or two years are not going to have that much of a detrimental impact on the overall outcome of our lives. even if we forgo that internship we were offered, graduate late, take a year of to work, or do whatever else we've thought about doing, success and accomplishment are just not that dependent on our making every decision perfectly or within a self-induced time frame. our view of God need to be bigger than that.
we sometimes forget that some of the greatest people in history didn't make their marks on the world until they hit their thirties, forties, fifties, or even sixties. instead, we allow our culture to pressure us into having everything figured out and wrapped up in a nice, neat little package by the time we're twenty-five years old. is this realistic? is this healthy? is this how it usually works?
we don't think so.