“I like to see it to know it, to be tested on it to be done, but I get a feeling I keep getting tested on this one,” this is from an older show, Family Ties but it’s still relevant today.  I lived my entire life like that.  I still live my life like this if I’m honest.  I approached everything as a test and I believed everything had an answer, like we had to figure it out and then move onto the next one.  There was a time my memory was air tight for absolutely everything, remembering conversations verbatim, all the details down to what people were wearing.  I truly was near eidetic.  And then as life continued to move forward, more and more stress and fear and obligations packed themselves into my life and I started losing things.  I struggled to remember even the most basic of things.  I started losing that facet of my identity—that I KNEW.  This was also accompanied by a time when I wasn’t exactly clear on where I was going or what I was doing. 

I thought my value was determined by what I knew, by proving what I knew.  I started looking for more tests to prove I knew what I was doing instead of looking for the tests that mattered.  Instead of looking for what mattered to me and what made sense to me, I just kept looking for more and more tests.   And soon that didn’t stop.  It was an endless cycle of thinking I knew what I wanted or I found my place only to discover it wasn’t the right fit after investing the energy because it was always all in for me.  Then I’d have to figure something else out.  I felt overwhelmed with tests and felt like I wasn’t going anywhere—because I wasn’t going anywhere.  I kept running around the mountain trying to find my path and I faced people who wouldn’t let me start the climb and I chased people claiming that I knew more than they did.

The problem with thinking we know it all and being tested all the time is that we never find that one thing we love.  Never find that thing that’s ours.  We aren’t meant to know everything, we are meant to be subject matter experts—pick an area or a couple of areas of expertise and go all in.  Stop picking the fights that don’t belong to us, stop picking up the responsibility that isn’t ours, stop taking accountability for something that belongs to someone else, and stop giving people permission to write our stories—up to and including saying that we somehow have an obligation to prove ourselves about something—that we need to show we are right.  That’s allowing someone else to hold the pen.  I believed life is a test—and I still do.  But I had it wrong.  It wasn’t a test about what I knew, a test about right or wrong.  It was a test about willingness to live life.  In that regard we are tested every day to see if we break the habit, if we follow through on what we want.  Until we have the life that’s ours, we will keep getting tested—there are no cheat sheets except for what we have in our souls.  The sooner we listen, the sooner we pass.