Life is Awesome

I had a weird moment this weekend. I was sitting by the fireplace in a beautiful colonial house that was built in the 1700s in the middle of nowhere, New York at a book club with a bunch of old ladies, eating English scones and discussing the art of hawk training and how it relates to grief. I looked around and thought: “What the heck. How on earth did I end up here?” And then I just smiled, laughed inside, and thought, “This is awesome. Life is awesome.”

Because I’ve had this experience many times before…

Like when I was sitting in the back of a truck with my friend Julia driving with some Arab guys to the grocery store in a small suburb of Amman arguing with them in Arabic that we could not possibly eat any more.

Or after curling up in an Asian sleeper bus for hours because I was too tall to fit comfortably and then arriving at a tiny hostel in the most beautiful village I have ever been to only to knock my friend’s face wash off the counter and have to stick my hand down a Chinese squatter toilet to retrieve the bottle.

And then there was the time I danced with a bunch of Special Olympians in the middle of a stadium packed with thousands and thousands of people as fireworks exploded overhead and celebrities and Olympic athletes cheered from a stage not too far from me with cameras in all directions, a fanny pack around my waist, and a Jordanian flag in my hand.

Or walking down an orchard row with my best friends in the blazing summer heat of Central Washington while wearing rubber boots and a chemical resistant jumpsuit, singing Ke$ha songs and picking leaves from the apple trees in order to take them back to the laboratory, brush the leaves onto a dish, and identify and count the microscopic bugs to test for pesticide resistance.

SO many times throughout my life I ask myself, “How on earth did I end up here?”

Sometimes I try to analyze and understand how it all fits together and why my life is just a series of random events. It can be frustrating when nothing makes sense and I have no idea what on earth I’m doing. But then I just smile exactly where I am and think, “This is awesome. Life is awesome.”