What Matters in Life is That You Just Keep Showing up

Life simply requires that you keep showing up. — Marie Forleo

I keep a journal where I complete a daily morning exercise called Morning Pages. (If you are a creative or a writer, you might benefit from this exercise developed by Julia Cameron). Every morning, almost without exception, I write three (or more) longhand pages about nothing, everything, or anything. Think of it as a Seinfeld script: a lot of stuff about nothing.

But, in reality, these daily nothing pages are something. They are my life. They are me, showing up day after tedious day. It’s my declaration to the world that I matter, my thoughts matter, and that no matter how boring and dull my world is at 6 AM on a simple Tuesday in the middle of November…I will keep showing up for myself and my life.

I hope that when my children or grandchildren (or whoever) discover these random notebooks filled with everyday pedestrian thoughts, they’ll see sprinkled in between the ordinary, the days when God and/or inspiration showed up in spades. I hope they’ll see why persevering at anything you love (and life) is necessary and important. I hope they’ll learn why showing up every day to your craft, your work, prayer, to your marriage, or for your health is so important.

Life is essentially a series of mundane days where we show up over and over punctuated by some spectacular moments that juice us up to keep us going.

Every day as a wife, a mother, a teacher, a writer isn't a mountaintop, write-home-about-it experience. It’s just a continuous drip of showing up, showing up, showing up…and then something magical happens and you say, that was worth all the days of showing up.

You write an inspired scene for your novel. Your child hugs you and says thank you for being my mom. You receive a letter from a student from years gone by and she tells you how much you influenced her life. You get a phone call from your sister that your prayers have been answered.

Don’t let society and social media fool you

We’re inundated by a false society of Wizard of Oz proportions where everyone has a curtain to hide behind (i.e. personal computer/smartphone). This magical curtain allows ordinary people to hide their real lives and produce spectacular images and stories of who they want others to think they are. They showcase the mountain top experiences but leave out the days behind the curtain when they are ordinary you and plain old me or just a dumb Jerry Seinfeld wandering around a parking garage trying to remember where he parked his car.

These Wizard-of-Oz theatricals can leave us feeling like our life is too ordinary, too boring, too plain, and maybe not worth showing up for. We’re not climbing Machu Pichu, celebrating 30 years of wedded bliss with never a thought of the dreaded D-word, or rasing the most amazing, talented, brainy, and respectful teens on the planet. There must be a greener pasture over the fence or around the corner, we think. Life isn’t delivering for me like it is for those on the bright screen of social media.

Just remember: it’s all trickery and filters, sound bites and staging. Real life wouldn’t make the front pages of Instagram or Facebook. Real life is just a series of showing-up days, quite ordinary and simple, boring and routine, but necessary to pave the foundation for the extraordinary to grace the stage.

Don’t be tempted to discard your everyday life in search of something more showy or glitzy or fulfilling. Those small moments are what we string together to create a life. Don’t search for life and miss it while you weren’t paying attention.

Every day the sun rises and the sun sets but we rarely take note. On vacation, at the beach or on an ocean cruise liner, we witness a spectacular sunset and we Snapchat it to the world, set it as our profile picture, and wallpaper it on our smartphone.

But that same sun has been setting for you every day of your life. He didn’t just show up for you on vacation to celebrate a special moment — he’s been showing up for you day after day ever since you took your first breath. And he’ll continue to show up even if you never noticed another sunset again.

That's called life. It happens while we’re seeking the extra-ordinary. It happens while we’re changing diapers, wiping snotty noses, walking dogs, cutting grass, paying bills, and answering the question “why?” 750 times a day.

The sun rises and the sun sets as punctuation around our day and when we lift up our head and look around we realize that life behind the curtain is pretty darn spectacular after all, and certainly worth showing up for.