I woke up last night to realize that I had raced through the past decade. It was a decade I shan’t easily forget -sometimes happy (the births of my children, the birth of my business, birthed into Minnesota) sometimes sad (the death of my father, the deaths of three uncles and an uncle by marriage, the death of my grandmother, miscarriages, unemployment and for much of it, the death of my health.)

I loved graduate school, but I even raced through that experience in an effort to save money - it was cheaper to complete it as quickly as possible - and so when I pick apart this past decade, this life shattering, life changing, growing up decade, I have to say that I’ve learned a few lessons. I’ve learned that I can pick up the pieces and start over, learned that people survive and can even flourish through hard times (if they have the love and support of family and if they hold strong to God) and learned that it’s very important to enjoy the now, because time flies and even a psychic can’t always predict what’s around every corner.

So as I sit here, contemplating the next decade, I am essentially grateful for the peaceful quiet of my home, for the fact my husband is back working, for our health including the apparent and amazing return of my own (thank you mum, for your prayers and thank you God for answering them) and for my beautiful children in their dynamic classrooms, with their caring teachers who are opening doors of knowledge to them each and every day. My goal for this year is a simple one, to enjoy – enjoy the moment, enjoy myself, enjoy what I do for my living and enjoy the special people in my life. I also want to enjoy the lessons that life will throw up this year for me. By embracing them, I know I’ll learn them.

By living in the now, by letting go of tomorrow and letting myself appreciate today, I hope to slow my life down a little. I no longer want to see those roses flash past me as I run at a million miles a minute in the fast lane. I’ve been there, seen that, and missed the picture. Now I not only want to smell those roses, I want to inhale them, drink them in, because it’s the roses that make life meaningful. It’s the roses that get us through the mudslides and the rock falls that are an inevitable part of life. It’s the roses that keep us blooming. It’s the roses that help to make life, make “scents!”

And so, as you sit there this week goal setting for your year ahead (I know you want to!) take a moment to think long term and see all the possibilities that lie ahead of you – the work you will do, people you will meet, vacations you will take, the births and the deaths that come to all of us – and allow yourself to acknowledge that in this hectic world of instant this and instant that, it’s important to purposefully set out to maximize the journey ahead of you, to revel in each and every step, to delight in the headway that you make along your path called life.  It’s important to get out of that sometimes inevitable fast lane and stop to examine those roses – because it’s the journey that counts often more than each veritable result, and if a journey is worth making, it’s worth embracing.

And if you can embrace this approach to your life, if you permit yourself to treasure each and every moment of the year as I intend to do,  you can count on the fact that your year will be a remarkable one. And for those of you who make the ‘joy of now’ your mantra, I predict that when you stand at the doorway of 2020 and gaze backwards,  you’ll say that it was most definitely a decade to remember!

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