Remember the wrinkles

Who can tell me a story about a scar they 'earned', just one?

Perhaps we ended up with the scar because we did something stupid like not paying attention when cooking with something hot or using a sharp knife.

Maybe a surgery was needed and we can tell everyone about what the surgery was and what lead up to it.

Typically, scars are not coming from a good reason, they represent something, usually a relatively short period of time, that was unexpected and maybe even undesired.

When I started writing this, I decided to count the scars I personally had, and I have about 10 unique scars, from surgeries to slamming my thumb in a car door in the parking lot when my dad was taking me to K-Mart as a kid. Each one of them has a memory or at least a moment "oh, that's when I cut myself with the new kitchen knives". Some of the scars aren't even visible because they are left inside us in our hearts and minds.

When you step back and look at yourself in the mirror, beyond any scars, what else do you see? Nearing 40 years old, I can't help but now notice the wrinkles that I now have. How come so few people think of wrinkles as something you've 'earned'?

Wrinkles don't happen in a moment, it's not like you are told a joke so funny that, BAM, you now have a crow’s-foot coming from the side of your eye. You can't smile just once and suddenly have the laugh lines around your lips. Wrinkles take time, repeated expressions, laughter, crying both good and bad, surprise and shock all leave their mark on our skin a little bit at a time.

If we think about this another way, at work, if we get an annual review, it's typically not what we did on an individual day or hour that makes it into the review, it's the buildup of our overall contribution. On a longer scale, it's not a single job or position we held that will define our career, it's the people we helped and the legacy we will leave with others that will be remembered.

When we believe something is going to be great, we’re willing to invest time to make it great, those wrinkles, are your life’s equivalent to invested time, and some people don’t get the opportunity to earn them.

So why, when we look at ourselves, is it so easy to recount a painful memory that left us with a scar and a story?

Why is it more difficult to tell a story about where our wrinkles came from?

Far too often we focus on the pain points, not the happy moments.

We allow our minds to reflect on the negative memories instead of taking a moment to be grateful.

The past, both for better and worse, leaves us with lessons to carry with us into the future.

We must remember that they are in fact, lessons, not burdens, not excuses.

We must make a conscious effort to “Remember the Wrinkles"