Life is a Journey

"Life is a journey, not a destination" is the quote I ended my very first blog post with. This is the quote that kickstarted my life changes this past year. I vaguely alluded to it again in my second blog post when I mentioned that it was the feast day for St. Therese of Lisieux, aka October 1st.

I have always loved this quote - even before it was connected to St. Therese's feast day or any major life changes for me like it was last year. I think it is a wonderful statement about how we ought to live our lives. We spend so much time aiming for this goal or that goal and once we reach those, we immediately set the next one, without stopping to smell the flowers or really thinking about what we've experienced and learned from the process.

I am all too guilty of committing this crime, and when I do so for too long, I usually end up having some sort of breakdown. I think my experiences

the past several months have been one of those times. In the spring my life became a blur of activity where my daily thought was "Just get through
this and then you'll be okay" or something of that nature. Life and it's challenges became things to plow through rather than to experience and grow from.

The problem is that when we approach life as something we just have to get to the end of, we miss all the wonderful things that happen in the middle. We are too quick to hold on to the bad things and forget the good. When we live our lives this way, we can easily be dragged down by the negativity and forget all about those good the emotions and experiences that we never processed, and it all goes downhill from there. When we live our lives as though they are a journey for us to experience, we live in the moment, reflect on our own actions and growth, and feel happier about our lives.

It has been exactly one year since I began this new phase in my life. While it has not been easy, and I definitely did not look at every experience as part of a journey but rather a destination, those moments I have been able to reflect on have been some of the most memorable points of my life. The times I saw my own journey, my own growth, my own happiness. So here's to another year on this journey we call life! Don't forget to stop and smell the flowers every once in a while ;)

"The world's thy ship and not thy home." ~St. Therese of Lisieux

Pax,
Kay