The Promise of Page 126

Dear Emma Kowalski. You’ve received a payment from [Anonymous] in the amount of $20,000.

Emma nearly choked on the first sip of her morning coffee as the train pulled out of the station and she read the PayPal email.

“What the hell? This has to be a scam!” Emma reasoned. She knew no one who would have the means to send her that kind of money. Plus, the “Anonymous” moniker in place of a name convinced her that her account had been hacked.

“Damn!” Now I’ll have to contact PayPal and straighten this out.

Ding!

Another email. Sender: Anonymous.

Emma tapped on the email to populate it and began reading.

Hey, Emma. I trust by now you have received the PayPal funds, and that you have recovered your journal from yesterday.

Emma’s daily train commute into the city was her personal therapy session. She used the time to share her deepest thoughts with her greatest confidant—a small black Moleskine notebook. Her mom gave Emma her first little black book as a graduation gift in the ‘80s—a time when Emma knew exactly who she was and what she wanted to be. She filled it with dreams and hopes for her future.

Her daily writing sessions continued ever since, and her little black book was always a source of comfort. Yesterday Emma absentmindedly left it on the train seat when she disembarked. She noticed it wasn’t in her purse when she got to the office, and before boarding the train for her commute home last night she stopped by the Metra lost and found. A good Samaritan had dropped off her notebook. She picked it up and tossed it in her purse to await this morning’s musings.

I’m sure you don’t remember my name. That’s not important. I just want to help you change your life. I know how difficult it has been for you lately.

“Change my life? This joker has no idea what my life has been like this past…”

Emma gasped.

“Oh, God. No. Just…no.” She closed her eyes, afraid to continue reading. The only way this person could know what was going on in her life is if he or she had read her notebook.

She took a deep breath. After a few seconds, she opened her eyes and sheepishly looked back at the words on the smartphone screen.

It’s just that as I sat there reading your heartfelt words--

Emma groaned. “Oh, Christ. He did read it!”

sorry about that; curiosity got the best of me when I found your journal--I saw a woman in despair.

“Jerk!” Emma’s embarrassment turned back to anger.

You write of a life wasted on inconsequential jobs and unpursued passions of your 22-year-old self; of letting life take you for an aimless ride instead of grabbing the rudders, adjusting the sails, and setting a solid course. You write of current financial worries and having nothing to show for your life.

“Harrumph! Rub it in,” Emma fumed.

I’m not judging. I’ve lived your pain. Like you, I had mountains of regrets. I’m reaching out to you now to help you avoid future despair. Just as you did for me.

“Like I did for whom?” Emma looked up from the screen and squinted out the train window into the distance, trying to recall anyone she could have possibly helped in that way. No one came to mind. She resumed reading the stranger’s email.

Like you, I mercilessly berated myself for all the bad decisions and unpursued opportunities. How could I have been so careless, so inattentive, with my dreams?

When I graduated from college at age 22, I knew I wanted to be an international FBI agent. I was going to keep America safe from foreign threats!

Know what I became by age 46? An accountant. Sound familiar?

Emma nodded, acknowledging both the self-reproach for abandoned dreams, and the vague familiarity of the FBI and accountant references.

You’re fixated on what you thought thirty years ago you would become today. You planned to be a world-changing globe-trotting journalist. Yet here you are—in your words—“a pathetic corporate drone who abandoned ship every time the dream got a little difficult and sold my soul for the easy path, the wrong path.”

The words became fuzzy as water dripped from Emma’s face onto the screen.

But did you? Did you really sell your soul for the wrong path? How do you know it was wrong? Because it’s not an idealized version of you that a 22-year old—who had the benefit of not yet getting knocked around by life—thought you could or should be?

It took me a long time to realize that a 22-year-old kid has no business creating a life plan. It’s a scientific fact that the brain’s frontal lobe isn’t fully developed until the mid-to-late 20s. (The frontal lobe manages executive functions such as the capacity to plan, organize, initiate, self-monitor and control one's responses in order to achieve a goal.)

WTF?! Someone who doesn’t even have the capacity to control her own actions is expected to plan her entire life and career? Who ever thought THAT was a good idea?

Amused by the irony, Emma managed a chuckle through her sobs.

Life is easy looking forward with hopeful rose-colored glasses or back with cracked rear-view mirrors that reflect how our choices turned out. Looking into the now is what’s difficult because we’re acting and reacting to daily curveballs and challenges through a lens of survival. But that’s where the real miracle of our character shows.

A life well-lived isn’t defined by what we do for a living, but rather by how we touch the lives of those we meet.

You, dear Emma, have touched my life deeply.

“Huh?” For the life of her, Emma couldn’t place this person.

About two years ago, on a Monday morning while riding the train from Naperville to Chicago on the way to my soul-sucking accountant job, you sat next to me after you boarded the train. You somehow picked up on my depressed mood that day, and simply asked, “Are you okay?”

I wasn’t. And I started blathering on about the high-school reunion I attended that weekend—the one where everyone but me had an exciting career.

You turned to me and asked, “What would make you happy? Right now. In this moment.”

“And he answered, ‘This. Just riding the train all day,’” Emma recalled. Now she remembered the stranger.

You followed up with, “Why?”

“Because I want daily adventure, and not being stuck in the human filing cabinet called an office tower.” Emma nodded, recalling the answer partly because of the graphic—yet accurate--description of downtown office space.

Lastly, you asked what was stopping me. After pondering that for a few moments, I realized nothing held me back.

You don’t know this, but that day I quit my job and applied for certification training to become a locomotive engineer. I now drive the train that I once rode to my job in the city.

“I’ll be damned,” Emma whispered.

I will be forever grateful to you for that life-changing conversation. That’s why when I came upon your notebook as I was making my post-route sweep of the passenger cars, I knew I had a chance to return the favor. (I remembered your name the moment I saw it on the flyleaf. One doesn’t forget the name of the person responsible for my career salvation!)

You’ve written about 160 words on the first page of this journal, and you’ve written on 125 pages. That’s about 20,000 words of self-loathing. (Hey, I’m a former bean counter. I count things.)

“Clearly,” Emma concurred.

It takes guts to do in-depth self-analysis. But I fear what you write on your next page will be the same thing. Over. And over. And over.

You are stuck in a ruminating rut.

“How poetic.”

My wish for you is that you start a new life on page 126. One where you don’t look back or forward, but explore the possibilities before you right now.

Trust that nothing in your past was wasted, but rather is a springboard for a bright future. This is your final destination only if you let it be. Your life is only wasted if you remain stuck in past regrets.

“It’s not that easy,” Emma thought.

And remember that you did accomplish a big part of your earlier dreams. You became a broadcast journalist for a few years and even made it to a mid-level market, which is when you left the industry and, as you put it, “embarked on a path of perpetual mediocrity.”

Youthful dreams are driven by ego. Mid-life reflections are a product of experience, wisdom, maturity, and inner knowing. Perhaps your older, wiser self realized those youthful dreams weren’t really what you wanted in the first place and you diverted from your original path to begin a great life experiment in search of your ultimate destiny—one better suited to who you are today as a mature, well-rounded person.

“Sure thing, Dr. Phil,” Alex thought.

But this is where the hard work comes in. You have to reset your mind and get out of your self-loathing rut. Figure out what you want. Then go after it with gusto.

What will your page 126 look like? What will your first step be into a new, more vibrant you—a you that you deserve? What are you going to do to make each subsequent page a repository of the wonderful experiences you’ll pursue, and the amazing new experiences you will make for yourself? How will you use page 126 to build upon all of your past escapades to create a future far better than you could have ever imagined before?

After reading of your financial challenges, I realize you don’t have the money to just quit your job and take a leap of faith.

Emma grimaced, mortified that he knew how careless she had been with her money.

I do. Accountants are good with money and I saved, invested, and made a lot early in my career. I’m in a good position to help you. That’s why I made the PayPal deposit to your account.

I selected $20,000 as the amount to represent the next positive, self-renewing 20,000 words you will write in your notebook to replace the previous 20,000 of despair.

So go write that page 126.

Make each subsequent page a repository of the wonderful experiences you’ll pursue, and the amazing new experiences you’ll create for yourself. Use your own page 126 to build upon all of your past escapades to create a future far better than you could have ever imagined before. Write promises to yourself of a better tomorrow, a better next month, a better next year. Then go live that page 126 life. Introduce yourself to the wonderful being you have become by maintaining your integrity through years of struggle.

If you do, when you look back on the your next 20,000 words, I’m certain you’ll see a new you—one who is starting to love herself, forgive herself, and is evolving into a being far more interesting and happy person than some 22-year-old with an underdeveloped frontal lobe could have ever envisioned.

Emma closed the email and reached into her purse for her black notebook. She opened it to the elastic marker. She began writing on the page.

Page 126. Today I become the driver of my own train and start my new journey by switching tracks...