My friend, Amanda, posted this up on her Facebook page and I love it so much that I wanted to share it as today’s post. It gets at all of my beliefs about passion, finding our life’s work, love, travel, and the passing of time.
This week on vacation, I’m spending loads of time with my nieces, Lorelei and Aubree. I try to visit them every 3 to 4 months. At 3 years old and 1 year old, I am conscious of how different they are every time I see them. People always say kids grow up so fast, though I never knew how fast until these two little ones came along. They are two more reminders of just how important it is to live the lives we want, by our own design and on our own terms. Life is just too fleeting to do anything else.
Too many people I meet are content to be just where they are, even if it’s nowhere they’d like to be. I used to envy how content they could be as I would drive myself close to the brink with my striving. Now that I see all of the benefits I’m creating in my own life, thanks in large part to my striving for so many years, I’m so grateful that I can only settle for what I really want rather than settling for what just seems readily available.
Many years ago I had a conversation with my friend, Amy, about our dreams to build our own roads, not just take the well-traveled ones. We agreed that it was as much fun to carve our own paths with our own hands as it was to get to the destinations we wanted to reach.
It’s in the doing that we really learn who we are and just who we’re meant to be.
Christa Avampato 