There is a quote that I mistakenly attributed to Winnie the Poo (but it turns out I am not the only one … there’s a whole website attributed to Poo misquotes) but is actually from 70’s movie called ‘The Other Side of the Mountain’.  I first came across this quote on a day that I couldn’t have been better set-up to find it.  I was in Kansas, waking up early, stopping off at a Starbucks, and in such a need for good coffee that I bought two cups – one to guzzle in the next hour and one to sip on throughout the morning.  I was on my way to my house ready to put in 16 hours into cleaning & fixing it up.  It was, in fact, the last day I ever lived in Kansas, and I was just a mere 24 hours away from moving to Alaska.  It was a day I was split with emotion, ready for what was coming, but wanting to make sure I didn’t ignore the past I was leaving.  Walking into that Starbucks, they were celebrating that one of their employees was on their last day as well.  On a chalkboard, someone wrote this quote that, regardless of the source, had a message that seemed perfect at the time:

“How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”

Since then, I have used that quote often.  More so in cases when we need to embrace the pain of loss; like when someone has to say goodbye to a loved one or to a beloved furry member of their family.  I use it to remind myself that what sadness that there maybe is the result of something that made you feel good.  Truthfully, in those situations, when it is time to say goodbye to someone, we need that idea to remind us of what we are saying goodbye to.  As ready as I was to move to Alaska, I was leaving 11 years behind – 11 years of laughs, 11 years of good times, 11 years of good people — and it was going to be hard to say goodbye, but I needed to remember what was so hard about it.

In the last few months, the first part of that quote has found itself into more and more situations.  I keep thinking: “How Lucky Am I …”  I’m not always one with a positive outlook on things, and few would confuse me with an optimist, but this statement is different to me.  It’s not about sugar coating the world, or blowing sunshine about.  It’s about keeping perspective.  It’s about appreciating what you have.

Sometimes it’s about taking advantage of things.  Like how often I traveled for work in the past, but made sure that if I was spending time somewhere special, I took the time to see those things.  How lucky I was to see things like the Forum in Rome, or the Mona Lisa, or the Great Wall of China.

Sometimes it’s about chance.  Like when I look at the circumstances when a really good friend came into my life – and that night I approached a bad situation in a way that was unlike me, which if I did follow what I would normally did I would have never become friends with them.  How lucky I was that I broke free of my negativity for the right people to brighten a positive world.

Sometimes it’s just realizing what could be.   Sometimes it is knowing that your world can change on a dime, but even if it doesn’t how good of a chance you had to be considered.  Sometimes it is enough to realize that having the opportunities you have had is worth seeing what could be.

I don’t always keep up with my blog because I am committed to it being about the good things that happen in my world.  Yet it seems these days, I grow better and better at embracing what positive there is.  That should be all the more reason to blog more.  All the more reason to share it with you.

Because … How Lucky Am I that you take the time to read this.