the life that is waiting...

welcome back to my lil blogosphere, my peeps!
as always i have some stories to share with you on this thursday of thursdays.
just fresh home from a sweaty spin class, drinkin my second cup of jane...
you may ask, why do i call it a cup of jane instead of joe?
well, the reasoning would seem to be quite obvious...
one of my favorite drinks in the world...
yep...should be a girl's name...not a boy :) just sayin...
okay, okay...onto the thoughts for the day...
per usual, life is quite full of happenings and crazyness...
who's to say what's good and what's bad?
it's all perception, right?
so, in that scheme of things i will say this...
my life is not completely chock full of crazyness really...
just mostly happenings, i would say.
a little over a week ago, my brother's wife had their second child.
i was lucky enough to be at the hospital when he came into the world...
little emmett leo...
i can't say that we were in the room for it...but we had the door cracked...
and we listened to this great transformation of life.
my mom and i stood there, listening, while julius, their other son, was waiting hopefully to meet his new bro...
at the first sound of his cry...all of our faces broke into smiles, and we scooped julius up and danced around and laughed...
perhaps his face was one of the best things to see, i have to say...
he just smiled and giggled and said his name...'emmmmmmmmetttttt', (in his high pitched lil sweet, soft voice he makes when he's being gentle)
and when we walked into the room to meet the new addition,
we asked julius what he thought of his new brother,
he said, 'i think i love him' and 'i missed you, emmett'
pretty much everyone in the room took a big sigh, hearing that untainted voice of love from a lil 3 year old boy...
it sorta took me back to before julius was born...
the nervous feelin of being unsure how life would turn out for my younger brother and his wife...how they'd make it...being so young...and already, a baby to add to their lives...
the crazy part of it all is when i found out, at first, that they were having julius, how i thought, 'oh, wow, this changes everything'...thinkin my brother's dreams of life would be dashed...
but how wrong i was...
i can't imagine life without that little boy, julius.
he's amazing to me...and hilarious...and full of love, wildness, and happiness.
to think that when i walk into the room, when he's in it...how a smile rips across his face, and he calls out my name and is ready to be thrown all around and given every hug and kiss available.
it goes to show you how amazing life can be, without even knowing that it's happening right there, in front of you!
life is so full of these instances that seem so regular, so simple...
and yet...AMAZING!
i heard a quote yesterday that fits into these thoughts pretty well...
"you must give up the life you had planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you."
these words come from joseph campbell...a mythologist, philosopher, and writer...
the guy that coined the phrase...'follow your bliss'.
so, what i'm thinking is that there are days that we come across things that seem as if they will be obstacles, that will make our lives harder...
something we hadn't planned for...
but then again...
just think about the other side of that...
once we climb that mountain...
walking down the other side of it...thinkin, 'wow, i went this high?'
it takes me back a few years ago, when i went to california to run a half marathon with a couple of my friends...
it was in big sur national park. the beginning was a straight climb, then the middle leveled out, then another really steep climb...
once i made it to the top, the half way point, and went to turn around, to go back down the hills we'd been running up...i looked out to the valley below, and thought to myself, 'holy shit, we came a long way! this is beautiful!'
yeah...
that's kinda how life is sometimes, isn't it?
it's quite full of moments that will blow you away...
the secret is...
you have to pay attention...you have to notice...you have to take your time.
because the things that we don't plan for,
are the things that surprise us the most...
who knows what's waiting for you just around the corner?
all i know is, that whatever it is...
is what it should be...
and that is 'the life that is waiting for you'