Our Personal Success

This morning, over breakfast, Emery and I had a rather profound discussion.  It was about personal successes in life and we both agreed that our lives have been very successful on a deep and meaningful level.   I have always had a bit of a "Thoreau" sort of mindset.  Marching happily through life to the drum beat I hear.  A bit of a hippie.  Certainly liberal in politics,  not much into materialism, but seeing family as the most precious jewel in life.  When we married, I was an Earth shoe, flannel shirt and jeans sort of girl.  Long hair, braided.  Tee shirts that said something about what was important to me, my husband fell madly in love with me for who I was, and we both had goals of living our lives with purpose, with intention, non of which had anything to do with status or with what was deemed success by the worlds standards.  We wanted land, food we could grow on our own.  Children that eat healthy food, and played in the great outdoors.  Our fun would be in observing nature, in hikes, in discovery of the marvels of creation.  We wanted our children to know that material wealth was not real wealth and that things were just that, things.   We wanted to live simply, deliberately.    We wanted our children to know how to learn, not just how to be taught.  We wanted them to be joyful in learning, not afraid of making mistakes.    We wanted to have our children blossom into compassionate adults that saw everyone as deserving of goodness.    This morning, we took a long look at our life so far, we are both Senior Citizens, aging Americans and taking stock of where we have been, what we have created for our lives, what we have accomplished and what goals we have reached and what is next for us.  Exciting stuff to think about.   Now I fully understand, that our goals, our dreams our successes are not what everyone would consider high on the lists of success, but for us, we are seeing all our dreams come true.   I am so thrilled to watch my girls feed their little families healthy foods and see my little grandblessings choose an apple over candy and love vegetables.  I love watching my girls value the things money cannot buy and care about the world around them and have compassion for the underdogs in our society.  I love watching our new grandbaby be diapered with cloth diapers.  I love that my girls understand the importance of breast feeding.  I love that they understand the importance of spending more time with the little ones, than in having a house that is in perfect shape.  We feel so blessed to have a closeness with our children that goes deep.   These are the things we count as successes.  Not in how much we own, or what we wear, but in what is in our hearts.  Life is good.