Sand, dreams, and choices.

We take vacations for different reasons. To visit friends, to party, to rest and be restored, to learn, and to see new lands. I took this vacation because I was invited by my friend Kathy Keane to visit her home in Baja and join her and her friends in painting her kitchen bright colors. I've met her women friends, a lovely group of seasoned women who mostly live in Baja and I've enjoyed them all, each one so different than another in their own way.

I've learned from Kathy's own stories that we are very similar and yet very different. We share a love of nature and the ocean and our views on men and relationships and spiritual and even political issues are very similar. Yet, our lives have taken very different paths. She is a wildlife biologist, and her path to this career and living in Baja was one of decisions. It's as if she would stop along the way and question her next step, deciding whether her current path was leading to what she would love or not and then re-evaluating all over again until she found herself here, with a career she loves, in a place that moves her to tears of joy, and a life full of interesting friends. She works and travels when she pleases, always returning to this beautiful house on the sand by the ocean, this tiny community of people who share her love of Baja.

And I think, this could have been my life, that I would have been happy making her choices, and that I wish I had done exactly that and that it seems so much more exciting than what I have created. So I have to remind myself that my life is full of such riches, except that they are different ones. And that my particular blessings are uniquely mine and bring me great joy. And that I am lucky to have met her and be included in her amazing circle of friends and be invited to spend time in this land she loves so much. So her blessings have blessed me and I am thus doubly blessed.