“The thing about life is when you stop moving it’s over,” John Dutton, Yellowstone.  Ok, full transparency, we’ve been on a kick with watching Yellowstone and it always amazes (worries) me that I find these tidbits of wisdom in these shows that demonstrate people of questionable character using terrible means to get what they want.  I’ll just chalk that up to recognizing the light in the dark and move on, it’s easier that way 😊 .  Regardless, this applies.  Motion is key to life.  When we stop moving the body stiffens, we lose range of motion, and we slowly deteriorate until we are frozen.  We have to move.  When we stay in the same place, rooted to our routines and habits, we miss out on all the other opportunities that could be available.  We have to move.  When we stop moving, we stop hearing the music in the world, worse, we stop hearing our own rhythm in it.  We have to move.

The past is behind us for a reason and when we get stuck there, we waste time and energy on something we can’t change. Time is one resource we can’t ever get back.  We can move with purpose, we can move with care, we can move with abandon, we can move cautiously, we can move with curiosity…frankly, I hope we move through life with all of those things at some point.  The rhythm changes all the time and we can either keep up or sit it out and wait for it to come back again, hoping we find it.  The context of this quote was about trying to maintain the traditions of over 100 years of family experience, protecting what they thought was theirs.  Repeatedly trying the same things when they are past their prime won’t change the fact that they don’t work any longer. 

We are meant to move through life, to experience life.  We aren’t supposed to sit on the sidelines watching life pass us by.  Sure, there are some interesting moments that we can spectate through, but for the most part, we are meant to act in that story.  It’s easy to see how we can live a life without really living it—but still think we’re living it.  There is a difference between being alive and living—and it takes some of us longer to remember that than others.  Feel all the things.  Breathe in the air.  Feel our feet on the ground.  Enjoy the sound of people laughing.  Those sounds infiltrate our lives like a symphony, telling us what to do and how to respond to each other.  Find something that keeps us moving all the time, the thing we want to keep moving for.  Then we keep dancing until we reach our end and it won’t be because we stopped moving, it will be because we have learned to dance our last dance.