live your life...

Anyone who followed along during our trip to Australia might remember that for one day, we hopped on a sail boat and spent about ten hours visiting the Great Barrier Reef. Our entire visit to the North Eastern part of Australia was sort of a last minute decision actually. We had originally decided that we would visit either the Outback or the Great Barrier Reef, but didn’t think that we had the time or money to visit both. We figured that since our last trip to Hawaii was tropical, it made more sense to visit Ayers Rock and the Red Center, an environment that neither of us had ever seen before. We couldn’t do it though…we couldn’t get that close to the Reef and not stop by to say hello! So we trimmed a little bit of time here and there, dug down deeper into our already dwindling pockets and managed a short yet amazing visit to one of the most spectacular places on earth.

So early one cloudy Monday morning in April, we got up with the sun and made our way to the Pier in Cairns, Australia. Around 8am, we stepped on our boat, The Passions of Paradise, with about fifty other passengers and began our trek out into the ocean to visit one of the great wonders of the world. As we set out to sea, the skies opened up and gave us a glorious day (and a sunburn to prove it!). Spending the day in close quarters with that many other people gives you the opportunity to make many new friends…and in our case, it also provided the opportunity to witness first hand just how much Europeans enjoy taking their clothes off in public (a blog for another time!)! But for a person like my self, it also offered up the perfect environment for people watching…a hobby that I love immensely!

As we set out to find our location on the Reef, Steve and I spent many hours lounging in the sun along the front of the boat and taking in the rare occasion to be doing…well, nothing! During that time, I noticed three young girls. They must have been in their late teens or early twenties (twenty-one at the most I would say) and the three of them were having the time of their lives! It was so fun watching them throughout the day and remembering what it was like to be that age. I was a very different person at that time in my life and while it wasn’t really that long ago…it certainly seems far in terms of experience. Right away, I noticed that all three of them had identical tattoos on the outside of their right foot. They were pretty tattoos that appeared to be cursive writing. I couldn't figure out what they said at first, but once I did, the blissful state of perfect contentment that they were experiencing suddenly seemed to make perfect sense...

Live Your Life

Live your life! How beautiful is that? Right away, I found my mind screaming out “I want one of those tattoos!” Then I remembered my low tolerance for pain and quickly decided to retract that comment! But these girls were indeed living their lives...you could see it in their faces and I loved it! What I loved most though was the word “your”. Live your life. Not your neighbor’s life or your colleague’s life; not the life your parents may have wanted you to live and not Heidi Klum’s life (as appealing as that may sound!)…but YOUR life, whatever that may be. I think the reason that this has stuck with me so much is because I’m terrible at comparing myself to others and believing that my life needs to look more like theirs. The art of comparison is my addiction of choice and there seems to be, in this world of endless airbrushing and reality television, no end to picking your poison! Even in my every day reality, I am surrounded by truly spectacular women; beautiful, ambitious, talented, successful, adored…you name it and my friends possess it all. And that’s what I love about them. It’s also why I need to be reminded on a regular basis to live MY life…because mine is different than theirs, sometimes by choice, other times not but either way…I’ve learned that it’s a long, slow death trying to be somebody else. Make no mistake about it though , it still hasn’t stopped me from trying!

As inspired as I am by this tattoo that I saw on the other side of the world, I’m also well aware of just how daunting a task this really is. Not so much the living your life part…but more so, the figuring out what your life is really about. How do you want to live your life is the tricky part, at least for me. Even then, knowing is very different than doing. Actually, isn’t doing the hard part of any task or goal? Who ever said that knowledge is power clearly never tried going through Facebook detox!

However, all this being said, the last month has also made me realize that you could very well spend an entire lifetime knowing or wanting or dreaming or waiting and never doing. And this needs to stop, at least for me. I’ll admit that I’m pretty good at achieving the big things but there are little things, day to day things, that I’ve been wanting to tackle for some time and I always find a reason not to. Ironically enough, usually that reason is life itself!

They are all things that are good for me…things that would better my life…things that would better me as a person…things that I don’t want to put off any longer…things that matter. As we stumble through the journey that we laughingly call life…we learn that there is no better time and quite possible, no other time…than now. And so it begins…I’m going to live my life. I’m going to live it more happily…more thoughtfully…more genuinely…more hopefully. I’m going to live more of my life and less of others and hopefully, throughout the process…I’m going to learn a bit more about what exactly that is because at this point...I'm still not sure.

But just so I’m clear…I’m not getting a tattoo!