Happy Birthday to Me!

Twenty-five years in and life is fantastic. So many more plans in my head, but to be morbidly honest, if I died tomorrow, I would die satisfied with the short life I lived.

If you died tomorrow, would you be proud of the way you lived your life? Would you close your eyes with a faint smile of satisfaction? Would there be any hushed regrets, repressed dreams, that you held buried by the years? Would you wish in those last moments that you had done something that you had talked yourself out of because it was too childish, irrational, difficult or odd?

Not me. Perhaps that's a good measure of "success." To die satisfied with the years you've had - many or few.

You know what I love about believing in fate and a higher power? I never know who will end up in my life, for how long, what he or she will contribute, or how many times this person will come in and out of it, but I am sure it's exactly what's meant to be. It could be argued that this kind of irrational trust is a coping mechanism for the unfairness of life's whims, but I find it absolutely magical believing life is working for me, not against me. So when I spend the morning hitting it off with a handsome stranger and part not with a number or a promise or an expectation, but a "well, maybe I'll see you again," I love knowing that, yes, maybe fate should have it that way. Maybe next week, maybe four years from now, but yes, maybe. And if fate shouldn't, I don't want it anyway. Trust.

When I was 19 years old and out of the country for the first time, I felt an intense sense of liberation. My first step out of my comfort zone awakened a part of me I didn't know existed. Something similar to the peace sign emerged on my upper back while in Costa Rica. Not representing world peace - I never fully bought that. It represented inner peace, something worthy of striving for. A profound trust in this life.

Still a long way to go, but I'm getting closer.