Today is a day to celebrate, I successfully survived January and am well on my way to March; and therefore Spring, and therefore summer and therefore fall. I'll be booking my flight to India soon (see here for why) and its making the whole thing seem like that much more of a reality. I'm now realizing how blindly I have gone into this, and how little I regret that. I think most often the best things in life are the ones that occur naturally, without our forcing or even cajoling. It seems everything falls into place, then we must work for the things that we were so lucky to have fall in place, then they all fall even further into place than we ever imagined possible. I'm in the second stage of the three, continuing with the hope that the rest will follow. A wise woman once taught me of hope, and I use it in the truest sense of the word (in my opinion). She said that to hope isn't to wish. Wishing seems to have a childish connotation of a far off dream or unattainable goal, "yeah right, I wish." But to hope is to expect, to anticipate. Not to vainly wish. I love that. Its so much stronger, it doesn't surrender to the universe's will, it chases after something worthy of pursuing. When we are in distress and receive that well-known counsel "things will work out," our response of "I hope" is the same as saying "I expect they will." We should be more hopeful, and not surrender to life, or the lack thereof.