The Ways of Our Lives

It is so interesting to see the way that things play out for different people. None of us have the same life to live. Whether you believe we were all born for a specific destiny, or that life is a set of chances, predestined or just random, the truth is, no one can say what is going to come in the future. Sure, there are plenty of people who try, but there is no way to predict what is to come. In all my wildest, craziest dreams, I never would have imagined myself married to a younger Czech man. I always wanted to travel, but had no clue that I would end up with passports stamped in so many different lands, and a family stretched over continents. But here I am, and this is the world that I inhabit. Over the past couple of days I had the opportunity to visit with a couple of American friends. One of them has come to the point that Czech is so much her home that she has no desire to return to America at all. Visiting family is fine, but Czech is the place she has set down her roots. The second girl also married a Czech man, and currently lives in a small, remote Czech village with her husband and baby girl. I am sure that neither one of them ever thought their lives would become so centrailzed on a country so far away from their beginnings. As a new year is about to begin, it's always tempting to start making resolutions and plans and trying to figure out what the next year is going to hold. There are those certain this year is going to be the last one for all of us, but they thought that right before the year 2000 as well, and look at how many people are left with rusty generators, and cans of food they have no desire to ever eat. Life is unpredictable. That's just the nature of things. There are always things in life I would like to change. There are personal things, and societal things, and so many things in between. 2012 is going to be another year of fresh starts and new beginnings. I have no idea how it will start, and even less of an idea how it will end. Sometimes my life feels mundane to me. If not predictable, it is at least some sort of normal. Regardless of the fact that I live a life quite unlike anything I ever dreamed that it would be, it is just the life I live. I think the main thing I need to remember that each day, whether full of new adventures, or spent in quiet repose, is a gift. That day will never return. I hope that in the next year I will take more advantage in that truth. I might not have the chance, or the financial means, to run all over the place, but I want to appreciate the days that I am given, and really live in the year to come.