Louis Jenkins: Lucky
Happy Birthday To Me! Twenty seven beautiful years in this crazy beautiful world.
I've been blessed. Blessed to have had a healthy mix of experiences both good and bad. If I were to sum up how it's like so far, it's me constantly butting heads with the grand design: making my own plans and milestones, working on it, and when all I have left to do is grab it, comes something else to test my resolve.
After much rumination on my options, it always broke my heart to realize that a yes to something means no to a multitude of other possibilities. What my path has shown me is that I simply can't have it all. But within this limitation is also the capacity and strength to live with and make the best of my choices.
C'est la vie, I suppose. Years of experience show time and time again the importance of humility, grace and gratitude. The humility to bend to the grand design when things don't work out as I want it. The grace to accept that all good things need a lot of work and a lot more waiting. And finally, gratitude as the driving force to greet every new day with a happy heart and end it, regardless of the circumstance, with a firm resolve to be thankful.
I have a lot more to learn. So much more to work for. And so much more waiting to do. My heart has never been this full knowing that on my birthday, I am but just a month away from welcoming a new addition to a life I'm building with the best partner to dance through life with.
Lucky
Louis JenkinsAll my life I've been lucky. Not that I made money,
or had a beautiful house or cars. But lucky to have
had good friends, a wife who loves me, and a good
son. Lucky that war and famine or disease did not
come to my doorstep. Lucky that all the wrong
turns I made, even if they did turn out well, at least
were not complete disasters. I still have some of my
original teeth. All that could change, I know, in the
wink of an eye. And what an eye it is, bright blue
contrasting with her dark skin and black hair. And
oh, what long eyelashes! She turns and with a slight
smile gives me a long slow wink, a wink that says,
"Come on over here, you lucky boy."