Happy New Year 2020

“Let’s take the journey of our lives“, Nina said. “We’ll sell the house, quit the jobs and start a new life. Let’s go to new countries where we’ve never been, and fall in love with everything. Let’s go hiking until we reach the sun. Let’s fall asleep under a night sky with an open fire. Let’s camp at a beach and wake up with the ocean at our feet. Let’s kiss at sunsets a hundred times. Let’s wake up early and watch the sunrise. Let’s fall in love like it’s the first time. Let’s pretend to meet again. This time we’ll be able to work things out. Maybe this time we won’t mess things up.”

That would have been the words of Nina if we had known then what we know today. With the turn of the year, our new life will be celebrated for the second time. For two years now, we have been on this journey that has turned us and our world upside down. Two years. That is 24 months, three continents, tens of thousands of miles, hundreds of sunsets, kisses under 100 trees, countless adventures, amazement and wows, tears of joy, and starry sky that we had not even seen on pictures. We fought a lot along our way. We had health issues, money worries, were eaten by black flies, stung by scorpions, got lost in central America, encountered snakes and bears, cried a lot, and lost ourselves along the way. And we are grateful for all of that.

Marc Aurel said, “It’s not death that we should fear, we should fear never beginning to live”

When we die, our lifeline goes flat. When we are alive, our lifeline goes up and down. All. The. Time. Life is full of ups and downs. Twist and turns, love and loss, happiness and sadness, success, and failure. Life is like a roller coaster. It starts slowly, fills you with expectation and curiosity, takes you up, and then sends you straight down, only to rise up immediately, again. Sometimes you close your eyes and hold on in absolute terror, but there are times, you have to raise your arms up in the air and enjoy the ride.

Life is changing. All. The. Time. Our environment is changing, our skin is changing, our age is changing, our point of view is changing, our friends and family are changing, seasons change. Everything is changing, but we want to remain the same. We settle for security, not recognizing that a flat lifeline, means we are dead. Life is full of ups and downs. Whenever I’m in a down, I remind myself that ups and downs are living. A flat line isn’t.
We are in one of the most incredible periods of our lives that we could ever have asked for. And so much is based on the fact that we decided to do something DIFFERENT.

We learned that we cannot avoid the ups and downs, but we can change the way we see them.

Wayne Dyer said, “When we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change.” (Thank you to our friend Friedrich)

We wish you, dear reader, our friend, our chosen family, a happy new year. We wish you a year full of ups and downs and the strength to live your life, apart from rules and expectations others. Enjoy the ride, even when it is bumpy.

Dream it. Plan it. Do it.