Life is a beautiful thing...
It's so full of minute details that fill the senses and inspire great feelings...love, suspense, anger, passion, despair, revery, nirvana...Sometimes I think there will be a day when I simply cease to exist because I've filled my quota of sensation. Each feeling is drinking from the beautiful cup of life, the most precious gift we've ever been given and so many take for granted. Each new experience fills my heart with wonder, with the intensity of it's very being.

I live a life of extremes. You know that. I know that- hell, I think thousands of people know that. I don't know how not to. When everything from drinking water to watching the clouds float by and listening to the ocean brings such pure joy...it's hard not to be extreme. I am continually running and jumping off cliffs into the beautiful sky without worrying too much about where I'm going to land. We do it in dreams, why not in life?

It's not a life for everyone, at least not the extreme part. I don't expect you to decide to go to get a last minute ticket with a three month stopover in the wilds...that's for people like me. It's exciting to live and to read about, but it's not a one-size-fits-all adventure.

For those of you who live peaceful existences which happen mostly in one place with some odd vacations thrown in for variety...cherish those details. The incredible warm feeling you get from having tea with an old friend, how she burned her tongue and you both enjoyed the time together...the grind of a coffee machine in the background, the tap-tap of a student in the corner on their laptop, the couple in the corner who appear to be on a first date, the cheerful jokes of the employees behind the counter as they wind down from their day...

The details of the most ordinary life can be as rich and beautiful as any world class adventure. In every life we have, we make choices. Our life follows the path of the choices that we make and in that course, we lose things that we didn't make priorities. Maybe you dream about those things, wonder what your life would be like if you'd chosen differently. That's normal. Then look around at all the details of your life and see what joy is to be found.

I have an old friend who looked me up a year or so ago- as teenagers we used to hike in the woods around my home and once got so lost (we had ventured onto the wildlife preserve next door) that when we finally found the road we had to slide down a large mud cliff, climb up another mudcliff and then walk 5 miles back home looking like a couple of mud monsters. :-) We had good times. We talked about our dreams, we both dreamed of seeing far off places and of falling in love and maybe having children.

Turns out, she did the most important part of what she dreamed. She's got three beautiful kids and the most wonderful husband she could have asked for. She's happy. She loves her life. I'm the same age (less a year), no husband, no children...but I'm seeing the world and learning new languages and learning so much about the people who live in this world...and I'm happy. I love my life. I feel so blessed that I can't hardly believe it myself sometimes when I think of all the places I've been, people I've met, things I've done...what a beautiful life.

Sometimes I think about the things that I've given up for this life, but we all make choices. We all choose what is the most important thing to us, and the bigger the goal the more energy it takes to reach it, and the more you have to give up to get there. It's not easy. To quote my mother, "When has life ever been easy?" Easy isn't the point. There's not too much accomplishment and pride in easy.

In this moment I'm overcoming the most dreadful cold (flu strength) and am experiencing some rather awful things (blowing the nose all day and night, etc) but it's still beautiful because it's part of this existence. I'm also anxiously awaiting the next stage of my life. I'm not positive where I'll be- I have just had one job interview for a position that although short, would be very good for my career in TEFL. Just when I thought I was all set to go to Spain, I got an email on a dream job I'd given up on that has asked for an interview.

Waiting to see what's going to happen...I am in such a state of suspense that it takes my breath away, and yet I must go on. You see, my choices in life don't allow much in the way of security. Much like the movie "Abre Los Ojos" I too must overcome my fears and just run and jump off the edge into the abyss to enter into the next dream. For, my life is a dream...strange and full of superlatives.

Here I sit wondering what will happen next, knowing that God will only reveal it to me when he's good and ready. So I sit. I drink my warm green tea through a tea straw from a desert pueblo in Argentina, sip my water...cool and refreshing as swishes down my throat, I hear the central air humming behind me, Simon and Garfunkel is playing on SAM, pens in my favorite colors scattered on the desk in front of me. My nose demands some tissue and some more lotion to heal it's woes. I take a vitamin C for luck and have a ripe banana as a snack, reveling at the texture with each bite...write this to all of you and think, "What a beautiful life."

I hope you know how beautiful yours is too. "God is in the details" my old friend Jim the Scotsman used to say to me with a laugh. It's true. Love your details as I love them. Most of the people who read this (I think) are people I've met on my travels and in whatever brief amount of time I spent with you, I saw something really beautiful within you that made me love you for who you are. It's not people's perfections that we love, but their imperfections, the time spent with them, and their quirks that we remember best and that make them dear.

All the best to you, whoever and wherever you are.