A Life in Snapshots

A Life in Snapshots

I’m a sucker for nostalgia. In fact, I attribute a huge portion of my personality to this character trait. I love looking back on any given day and trying to figure out what I was doing a year ago—where I was, who I was and what I deemed important.

You should try it—when people look at their lives in snapshots, they are always surprised to find that, week by week, day by day, they’ve been growing and changing into who they are today.

The days between Christmas and the New Year bring a unique season to our country. People seem to stop collectively and examine what their lives have consisted of in the past year, two years, five years— and more importantly, they consider whether or not the things they pour their time, energy and passion into really matter.

In other words, it’s a nation-wide nostalgia session. It’s a healthy dose of hindsight—we can look back at our lives and see how much we’ve grown, where we are now and where we want to go next.

Let me show you what I’m talking about when I say a life in snapshots. Bust out your Marty McFly vests y’all, because we’re traveling all the way back to the sepia-stained year of 2009 so I can prove my point.

February 2, 2009

It's a Monday, and I'm wrapping up one of the last dress rehearsals for Les Miserables. At this point of my life, I have a five-year streak of shows going for me. I never had more than two weeks off between any two productions, and as an aspiring actor, that’s the way I liked it. In my mind, this was how my life was meant to be—a never-ending string of shows.

In my sophomore year of high school I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life; I just had fun and lived from one rehearsal to the next. My closest friends were the guys my age in the youth group—we got ourselves tangled into more mischief than I care to remember, but we had more fun than anyone we knew.

I could have cared less about school. I took Pre-AP classes, skirted my way through the mandatory Spanish classes, and avoided anything that required effort.

As far as leadership went, I had about zero interest in being involved in any. The extent of my leadership experience consisted of co-directing a 15-minute one act— I was a born, albeit articulate, follower.

November 15, 2010

                Like everyone else in the high school graduating class of 2011, I had become acutely aware that a clock ticked in the background—the time bomb named “college”. It terrifies, excites, and frustrates everybody their senior year. For me, decision time had come.

                I still had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew that God had already said no to me pursuing theatre in college.  At this point, however, I turned a deaf ear and stubbornly prepared college audition tapes in spite of what I knew God had told me. 

               

               It would be another five months before I finally accepted God’s plan (*cough* Jeremiah 29:11 *COUGH*). This led to a very bitter season of my life where I didn’t treat the people around me well in any sense of the word.

                School had become an oppressively boring routine. I was one of the guys you would see in classes like “Marine Biology”—because in the back of my head I kept telling myself it didn’t matter what I was enrolled in, because musical theatre programs weren’t going to care what my GPA was.

                At this point, God had planted the seed of leadership in my heart, but it was small. The word that seemed to haunt me as I prepared to leave Union High School was “legacy”—I was constantly plagued with a question: “What legacy are you leaving behind you, and is it a legacy worth following?”

                I never liked the answer to that question.

December 3, 2011

            It’s the Saturday before dead week—and I’m at a party. There are probably 250 people in the house, and I walked around like I know every one of them.

             This marked the end of one of the most impacting semesters of my life—starting college, pledging BYX, and become an extrovert by choice—and when I say extrovert, I mean EXTROVERT. Life had never been so exciting and dynamic.

                My study habits had become drastically different. I knew every good study spot on campus, because I had frequented most of them myself. I had decided on public relations as a major, and was completely stoked for my future in it (STILL AM).

                I had two crystal-clear passions in my life: leadership and people. I feverishly pursued opportunities to be an influencer, leader and example-setter—more than that though, I sought out any opportunity to meet and connect with people. I would drop a textbook instantly for the opportunity to go to Classics with a couple pledge brothers “just because”.

                I had hit the sweet spot—I could feel God moving in every day of my life, and each new day held a new experience.

                I can’t help but love life each day now.

December 19, 2012  

                I’m 20 now. I’m at the precipice of the most exciting decade of my life, and I’m experiencing it with some of the best people I’ve ever known. My roommates are the most unique blend of personalities I could ever imagine, and they are the support group that has pushed me this semester to grow in more ways than one. They are just a few of the great friends that have come into my life that make every day a memorable blessing.

               Between learning a new language, picking up business classes and starting up my second consecutive season of being in charge of rush for my fraternity, I sometimes can't help but laugh when I think that four years ago the most exciting thing in my life was the next show.

                I joke with the people I’m close to often that I feel like I’ve started my 30s more than my 20s. Yet at the same time, I really do feel that way—and it’s a good thing. Maturity is a lifelong journey—but the past year and a half has grown me exponentially. It makes me irrepressibly excited for the future—one year down the road, two, three. The road I’m on is the kind that is filled with so much life and hope I can’t even understand how lucky I am.

Nathan, what are you getting at? 

               

                Look at the snapshots of your own life. I'm willing to bet if you roll the clock back even three years, you'd hardly be able to recognize yourself. But so often we lose sight of this fantastic journey.

                It’s so easy to get lost in the day-to-day, the routines, the checklists, the goals. When we let ourselves get enveloped in all of that, we don’t see how we’re changing over time. Our noses get too close to the grindstone and we get wrapped up in things that aren't  important. So here is what I’m asking you two weeks ahead of time.

                This New Years, take a step back and look at your life. Look back a year, two years. Ask yourself, who are you now? What do you value? What are your priorities? What are your goals? Have they changed since a year ago? Two years ago?

                Then ask yourself this— where do you want to take your life now?

Your future is in good hands—it’s in your hands. So grab it, and go run after something worth chasing so that you have something to remember when you look back on 2013.

See what a little nostalgia can do?

Go celebrate Christmas—enjoy your families, remember the birth of our Savior and bring in the New Years right—but take a few minutes to step away. Look back and reflect—

Because when you look at a life in snapshots, you’ll be surprised how much the picture changes.

Thanks for reading—I wish you all a Merry (Early) Christmas!

Yours,

Nathan Robertson