Take Back Your Life!

In the summer of 2012, I stumbled on The Opposite of Loneliness, a moving essay that went viral, an essay written by Marina Keegan, a terrific young writer who died in a car crash on Cape Cod five days after she graduated from Yale. She was from my home town.

I’ve read this essay maybe 10 times and each time I do, it brings me to my knees because it speaks to my soul.

Marina writes, “There’s this sentiment I sometimes sense, creeping in our collective conscious as we lay alone after a party, or pack up our books when we give in and go out — that it is somehow too late.”

Haven’t we all felt that it’s too late? too late to start over? too late to begin? too late to live? too late to find love? too late to travel? to late be ourselves?

I remember looking in the mirror at 23, yes 23, and feeling washed up, old, a has been. This went on for about 5 years until I managed to slap my own face and say, “girl, wake up. you’re really young.” That’s when I decided to just go for things and forget the “rules” folks who don’t want you to live a full, rich life have written for you. 

And she talks of the endless possibilities awaiting us, if we only step up and take them. “What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over.”

You know when they ask, “Who would you like to have lunch with dead or alive?” Marina would be one of my top choices. Such a challenger of the status quo, such an alive person. I’m grateful that writers can stay with us through their words. You can connect with them over and over by just picking up one of their books or essays or stories.

Read her soul-stirring inspiring essay here.

I’ve been guiding a writing class at Wayland Public Library using Marina’s essay (now a book) as the focal point. We’ve been having a great time reading her words and sharing our own. Almost every one of her essays talks about death, not in a morbid way but in a way that makes you want to get up out of your chair that you’ve been glued to in some way and go live your life.

Her words urge us to live … now.

We all write about a few themes, over and over. I call it the life lesson we need to learn. No matter what I start to write about, I always end up writing about self-liberation of some kind, tacking off the shackles, from my self, from the mirror, from others opinions, from fear. That’s why I love writing classes, it’s a way to connect with your life lesson, the one you were put here not only to conquer but to assist others with.

How about you? Did you ever feel it was too late? For something? Did you figure out a way to get around the “too – ness?”