what IS truly important?

I can't believe that I'll be 34 in a few days.  It used to sound so old.  Now it sounds so young.  I thought a lot of things about this 34th year.  It was supposed to be the year I graduated from my Masters in Chinese Medicine.  It was supposed to be the year Brian and I thought we might be able to talk about starting a family.  It was supposed to be the year we figured out how to be homeowners.  It was supposed to be a big trip to another country.  It was supposed to be a lot of things...now I think how funny it is to plan life so far ahead.  In the future you can plan timing to be so perfect, in the future all goals are met and your life path is just perfectly laid out stone by stone.  How lucky anyone must be to actually be able to plan for 2, 3, 5, or 10 years in advance and actually have things come out the way it was envisioned.

This morning Brian and I took an 8:00 am stroll on a long white sand beach.  Light winds, crystal clear turquoise water, blue cloudless sky overhead, not too many people on the beach in the morning.  We were talking about how lucky we were.  How many people have the opportunity to take a leisurely walk on the beach at 8:00am on a Tuesday morning?  How lucky we were to have such supportive family, friends, and even strangers that have helped make this life possible for us.  How lucky we have a comfortable home to live in and our precious little doggy Tigris with us all the time.  Yea, I know...the trade off is that we face a life threatening disease every morning, but I can't emphasize enough that we wake up happy.  We are still learning to take each day for what it is, which is another day together.  Our multi-directional lives of 2 years ago has turned into a single-focus life of doing everything possible to LIVE.  And with this simplification we have found happiness.

That is not to say we weren't happy before the cancer.  I would venture to say we were so sickeningly happy that we infected other people with our happiness (ci or no?).  But I was stressed out.  I was so driven to achieve my pre-planned goals that I forgot the joy was in the journey itself, not the finish line.  Goals are tricky.  I think they are necessary to have to give motivation and focus to life - but goals might also lead us away from what is truly important.  I guess the question is what IS truly important?

In this 34th year what is truly important is the same as what was always truly important - time spent with my loved ones, and time spent breathing in the beauty of this world.  If you had asked me 2 years ago what was truly important the answer I would have given you might have been different - but in reality it is no different than the answer I give you today.  I was just focusing on the stones I was stepping on instead of looking out to the horizon.

Love,
Denise