“It’s a beautiful life, oh, oh oh, oh.”  Yeah, that’s right.  I just started my blog quoting Ace of Base.  Who does’t like a little 90s pop reference every now and again to get the creative juices flowing.   People probably don’t think of the famous Swedish pop group as a harbinger of deep lyrics.  Nonetheless, they hit the nail on the head with this one.

Life is perfectly imperfect, but it is beautiful.  Even when life gives us lemon, and I think we all know I’ve been drinking a lot of lemonade this year, life is beautiful.  This year has been a roller coaster of loss, joy, pride, sadness and change.   There were times this year I didn’t think that there was beauty to be found, but there it was a cardinal at my window.   Life’s beauty can surprise you in the most amazing ways and the most difficult times.

As the Sagan quote points out, while we are on this planet each of us is given the chance to take several trips around our local star.  What we make out of that trip is up to us as individuals.  When you start to think of life as a finite opportunity, your perspective shifts dramatically.  Oftentimes, we see ourselves as indestructible until we are faced with our own mortality.

Our beautiful life took a big turn last spring.  With Jake graduating high school and plunging into adulthood, our world shifted dramatically.  It’s kind of odd transitioning from managing three kids to only managing two.  Moreover, I have to remind myself of our new reality.  After all, we need to treat him as an adult  now.  In addition, to the new adult in the household, we graduated elementary after having started it in 2004.  

There are definitely perks to this new arrangement in our world.  When he texted me tonight to ask me to close that garage door since his dad’s thing didn’t work.  I could respond with “that’s what she said” without feeling like a bad parent.  His response?  It was epic.  Please see the Michael Scott gif he sent me below.  I freaking love this kid!

Sometimes what holds us back, is our fear of the unknown.  It prevents us from pursuing our dreams , doing the things we love and sometimes accepting reality.  Its time to stop being afraid of the unknown, grab the bull by the horn and live your life.  For you it may mean pursuing a new opportunity, for others it may mean accepting life’s new realities.  And yet for others, (right CS) it may mean selling all their things and becoming a goat farmer in Norway.  I’m mean did you see the Aurora Borealis gifs?  How could you not want to live there?  At the end of the day, you will either define your trip around the sun or it will define you.