Life's a Circus

The day began with a dream about a circus. Some friends and I were putting together a circus. Nothing crazy, just a few acts. But we hadn't even picked the music, costumes, or choreographed any thing before mom was inviting people and literally selling tickets to people we didn't even know. I kept trying to tell her that we weren't ready yet. But She wouldn't listen. She jumped ahead of herself, just like so many of us do these days.

Before I explain my point, perhaps I should explain why I would have a dream about putting on a circus in the first place. So, why would I have a dream about putting on a circus? It does seem like a strange thing to dream about. But not for me. When I wasn’t much younger than I am now, my sister and I, and occasionally some other friends, would put together a circus over the summer. We would pick songs and put together acts. Gymnastics, dance routines, clown acts, hula hooping, lion taming. It was crazy the things we would come up with. Then, on the day of the big performance we were all excited. The tickets were sold, the guests were taking their seats, and after weeks of planning and practicing the circus was about to begin. But let’s back up a bit. None of that can happen properly if the guests arrive before any of that practicing and planning is done like what happened in my dream. Everything must go in the correct order.

A lot of work and preparation goes into a performance. You need to find the performers and an announcer,  figure out acts and music, choreograph the acts, put together costumes, choosing the right order for the acts so that no one has too many acts in a row, and then hours and hours of practicing, deciding when it's going to take place, “selling” tickets. Then, after all that, is when you can have the performance. It takes a lot of work. You can’t have the performance before you do any of the planning. Well, you could, but it wouldn’t be a very good performance. So then why am I so impatient to get to the big performances in my life before I do the rest? 

Life is like a circus. We all have a series of big performances in our lives. From learning to walk to getting married, life is full of both little and big performances. Main acts and sideshows. But those performances don’t just happen. Every one requires a lot of planning beforehand. Before you can walk you need to crawl. Before you can get married you need to plan the wedding. Some take only a little planning and some take years of planning and preparation. Recently I have been having trouble doing the little things that come before the big performance. I find it to be tedious and I just want the big day to come already. But, just like those circuses we would put on when we were little, everything must be done in the right order. I need to plan, practice, and prepare for the big performance that is to come.

I do love the planning that goes into the circus performance. So I should enjoy the planning and practicing that comes in life. All the little things that come before the big changes. The big performances. Because life is a circus. And sometimes the performance doesn’t go as planned, like when we forgot an important prop for one of our circus acts and had to pause the whole show, but if it wasn’t for the hours and hours of preparation that goes on behind the curtain, then the show would have been an even bigger disaster than that. We would have forgotten much more than just the goldfish crackers. So remember that the preparation is what is done behind the scenes to make the performance fantastic. Don’t jump ahead of yourself like I’ve been doing recently. Enjoy all the hard work that goes into making that performance a success. Because that feeling that you get when you take your final bow after a lot of hard work is so much sweeter than when you jump ahead of yourself and expect it to all fall into place on its own.

Life’s a circus. So enjoy the show. And everything that goes into making that show possible.