Walking Your Own Path

 Andrew and I, after putting the kids to bed, sat and talked, and renewed our decision to keep doing what we're doing with our lives. I have learned, long ago, not to worry about what other people do or say. If it doesn't affect me, then I'm not going to let it. I don't care what color you are, what job you have, what sexual preference you have, whether you are thin, fat, short, tall, deaf, hearing, wheelchair, missing a limb...  if you are nice to me, I'll be nice to you. If I don't know you, I won't be talking about you. And if I do know you, I won't be talking about you behind your back to other people.

I can't be worried about anyone else's path but my own. If I keep worrying about that person planting flowers along their path, or someone else hacking away weeds on their path, or yet another person straying away onto someone else's path, I'm going to neglect my own path. I'm going to trip on a root or my path will develop pot holes and I'll fall face-first into a mud puddle. I need to take care of my path, keep it trimmed and neat, decorate it with some daisies and lovely weeping willows along the path.  I might not always see what is at the end of the path, but I am going to enjoy walking my path. Worrying about someone's path will cause to me to miss the beauty in my own path-- that lovely pond just behind that rise, or the butterflies flitting among the dogwood branches, the nest of bird eggs in the limbs above my head and turtles sunning on logs in the bright sunshine.

I have made my share of mistakes, strayed off my path plenty of times and lucky for me, found my way back. I am walking where I want to be in my life-- living out in the country with my lovely husband, my four children, my home, my animals, my garden...  I wouldn't change a thing. THIS is where I want to be.

Lucky for me, my husband shares the same life goals with me and we made the mutual decision to take that leap away from the city into the country life. We didn't wait until we retired to move here, we did it while still young enough to do things that would otherwise break down our older bodies. True, we might have had more money if we waited until retirement and could hire someone to do the work, but where's the fun in that? This way, we can honestly say we did it ourselves and we learned from our mistakes and turned those errors into successes.

I know I'm on the right path and I truly belong here. I can't let what other people say or think keep me from doing what makes me happy. It's been 7 years since we moved here and soon it will be 14 years since I married Andrew. Absolutely no regrets. Zero. I'd do it all over again, because changing even one thing would change the end results, and I like where I'm at. Poor, yes, but happy. Oh, so happy!