Progress

Progress. The act of moving forward. The opposite of being stagnate. When we show progress in our lives it means we are growing. Whether it be personal, spiritual, professional, relational, or any other ‘al, progress is necessary for all aspects of life. It’s what keeps us going. It’s the driving force that pulls us out of bed early in the morning to take care of our young or head off to work. It’s the need to be seen and heard and validated. It’s losing the weight and eating healthier. It’s striving to better ourselves in all aspects of this game called life. It’s the drive to love and be loved, to accept ourselves and others.

Progress. Without it there’s no life. You end up stuck in a monotonous rhythm of nothingness and can easily fade away into the background of living a meaningless life. But the moment you realize progress in your life has come to a screeching halt, is the moment you realize you’ve ceased to exist. It’s a punch in the gut; a slap in the face. It will rock you to your core. It will drop reality harshly upon your head and send you into a tail spin. You will realize how one bad choice led to the next and the next one after that and the one after that one, too. You will see how you’ve minimized your life to the point of bane existence. How you’ve made yourself so small that no one sees or hears you. You barely breathe in fear of being caught, found out. You cease to exist and everything fades to black. Gone in the dark abyss with nothing or no one to save you but yourself.

Until one day the light shines through the window panes ever so slightly and you glimpse for a split second the life you used to have. The progress you felt and lived daily. The expectation of continued progress and growth day after day. A never ending circle of life and love and joy and heartache and a desire to do and be better. A life lived out loud and on purpose. A life so full and so noisy there’s never a doubt of your progress and how it’s impacting the world. How everyday you rise with purpose and a knowledge that you matter. That your life matters. Living out loud, on purpose, with consistent progress. Thriving in everyday life and making no apologies for who you are. This is the dream. This is progress.