A QuietQuest Reflection

Last night, I was supposed to be meditating.

Instead, I was thinking about keys.

Not metaphorical keys.

Actual keys.

House keys.

Lockboxes.

The sort of keys that come attached to responsibility.

My life is changing.

Last week, I gave notice at my current job. In a few short days, I will be stepping into a new role, a new industry, a new team, and a new chapter.

I am not ready to tell the whole of it just yet, but I can tell you the shape.

I am getting back into real estate.

Not sales.

Not the version of real estate that once made me feel like I had to become someone I was not.

Something different.

Something steadier.

The welcome has already been felt before I have even walked through the door.

That feeling alone is difficult to put into words.

For years, work has often felt like something to survive.

This feels different.

As I settled into meditation, my mind kept circling the future.

Not in broad, dreamy terms.

In details.

House keys.

Lockboxes.

The front desk.

The office I had already toured.

My mind was walking through the space before my body had the chance to belong there.

I could see where things were.

I could see myself there.

Even before the job was officially mine, I could picture myself there.

After the interviews, while I was waiting to hear, I still could.

At some point, I stopped applying elsewhere.

Not because I knew.

Because something in me had already chosen.

Every time I noticed my thoughts drifting, I gently guided them back.

Not because thoughts are bad.

They are not.

They are part of being human.

One of the most common things people tell me about meditation is that they struggle because they cannot stop thinking.

My answer is always the same.

Neither can I.

Meditation is not about forcing the mind to become empty.

It is about noticing what appears and choosing not to chase it.

It is a practice.

Some days are easier than others.

Last night was not one of the easy days.

Part of that is because I am standing between seasons.

The law office where I currently work has been an important chapter in my life.

I have learned more than I can easily summarize.

I have worked alongside talented people.

I have gained skills and experiences that will travel with me long after I leave.

For a while, this was exactly where I needed to be.

The frame held while I grew inside it.

But sometimes growth requires a different frame.

Not because the old one failed.

Because it succeeded.

Because it gave me exactly what I needed for that season.

And now another season is beginning.

Eventually, the noise began to soften.

The future stopped shouting quite so loudly.

The thoughts slowed.

And then, for reasons I still do not entirely understand, a memory surfaced.

Wilmore-Davis Elementary School in Wheat Ridge, Colorado.

Sixth grade.

There was a program for students who were given special responsibilities around the school. I cannot remember what it was called anymore. Perhaps someone reading this will remember.

What I do remember is the flag.

Every morning and every afternoon, a small group of students would raise and lower it.

They wore reflective safety vests.

They were trusted with something important.

And I desperately wanted to be one of them.

Every time names were announced, I listened carefully.

Every time my name was not called, I felt disappointed.

Looking back, it seems like such a small thing.

But childhood does not experience disappointment in measured adult doses.

I began to wonder if it was ever going to happen.

I began to wonder if there was something everyone else saw that I did not.

When we are young, we do not always have the experience to separate waiting from rejection.

Sometimes they feel like the same thing.

Not being chosen can feel personal.

Not hearing your name can feel like an answer to a question nobody else even knows you are asking.

I wanted that responsibility.

I wanted to be trusted.

I wanted to belong to something that mattered.

Then one day, my name was called.

I still remember how excited I was.

The vest.

The routine.

The responsibility.

The careful handling of the flag.

The feeling that someone had looked at me and decided I could be trusted with something important.

Sitting there in meditation all these years later, I realized something.

I was not remembering the flag.

I was remembering the feeling.

The feeling of being entrusted with responsibility.

The feeling of stepping into something bigger than I had occupied before.

The feeling that comes when opportunity arrives and asks something of you in return.

Meditation has a funny way of connecting dots we did not know belonged together.

The mind reaches backward to help us understand what is happening right now.

The sixth-grade version of me was not thinking about careers.

She was not thinking about leadership.

She was not thinking about the future.

She simply wanted the chance to prove herself worthy of trust.

She wanted her name to be called.

And now, standing on the edge of a new chapter, I realize that feeling has returned.

Not because I know exactly how everything will unfold.

I do not.

Life rarely gives us that luxury.

But there is a sense of responsibility waiting for me.

A sense that what I do will matter.

A sense that I am walking into a role where I can keep growing.

Last night, I sat down intending to meditate.

Instead, I found myself visiting a sixth-grade version of myself standing beside a flagpole in Colorado.

A child who wanted responsibility.

A child who wanted to be trusted.

A child waiting patiently to hear her name.

Maybe that is what the memory came to remind me.

You have been here before.

You know what it feels like to wait.

You know what it feels like to hope.

You know what it feels like to wonder whether your name will ever be called.

And you know what it feels like when it finally is.

Forty years ago, someone handed me a reflective vest and trusted me with a flag.

In a few short days, someone else will hand me a set of keys.

Different responsibility.

Different season.

The same feeling.

Yours in presence, gratitude, and new beginnings,

Terra Turner