As I drove through the mountains and canyons of Colorado and Utah on my way to California last month, I was struck by the brevity of a human life compared to these landscapes that have formed over hundreds of thousands of years. My time here on Earth in this body is just a blip in time, and it’s my job to live every moment fully. In fact, that’s partially why I was taking that road trip to the ocean with the dogs, Ella and Mala. As I inch closer to 40 (I turn 39 this month), and Ella is nearing 11 years old, I felt a strong pull to share my love of the ocean with her while she could still enjoy it.
The trip also served as a sort of celebration of my semi-retirement from Human Resources. I moved to a part-time schedule at Brocade, so that I can dedicate more time and effort to pursuing the perfect piece of land on which to build the retreat center. The road trip to the ocean followed by our two-week trip to Portugal, Spain and Morocco serve as a sort of bridge from my former way of life to the new.
Ever since my heart attack in 2009, I have been slowly searching for the path that allows me to spend my remaining days with more purpose – essentially to bring more life into my life. I wholeheartedly buy into this statement from Randy Komisar: “And then there is the most dangerous risk of all — the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.” In fact that is exactly what I have been doing for the last 18 years – working in a job that I felt would afford me the ability to be financially sound before moving on to what I have loved since I was a kid – teaching. At the time I was playing “school” with my mother’s old text books when I was about nine years old, and later in high school, I had a more traditional view of myself as a school teacher. However, as I have uncovered my path, the subject has become yoga, and the experience I want to share with others is living a full life and letting the light of the self shine – to light up the ever-darkening world.
While I’m not sure if Ella and Mala understood the many hours in the car, I do know that their unbridled joy of running through the sand at the beach and chasing the waves back into the ocean was worth every second spent in the car for me. My mountain girls are also water girls, like me. Watching the dogs on the beach provided a perfect reminder to embrace every moment of freedom with gusto, because you never know when you’ll find yourself back on a long road of uncertainty; searching for the path that will bring you home to the life that you were meant to lead.
