Did you ever stop to think, “How did I get here?” Were you at a life point? In a relationship? Considering an unhealthy behavior? The choices are endless, but the pausing to consider is specific. This thing, right now. How did I get here and if it needs changing, how do I change it? I have at several points in my life paused and thought, what am I going to do about where I am. Mostly, I have the discipline to change things, but occasionally, I just trundle on. On the first day of high school a teacher told us that some of us would excel in his class while others would fail. In either case he said, “It’s because you want to. “You will excel because you are driven, because you don’t want to disappoint your parents, because you have a life goal or something else. You will fail because you are punishing yourself or your parents or because you are too lazy to do the work.” You have, in either case, he said, “A big ‘ol want to.”
That’s what I thought when I read the headline about a manatee and her calf found far away from natural habitat in a man-made lake. Did she look up and think, “How did we get here?” Did she take a wrong turn somewhere? Or did she take her calf on an adventure just to see what else was out there? I just wonder if she had a “want to” or if she now needs to figure out how they got to where they are and how they are getting back to where they need to be.