I boarded a plane in LA bound for Thailand wearing a pendant inscribed with words inspired by Thoreau – Live the life you have imagined.  I could not help but think back to the once in a blue moon New Year’s eve 2010, when I set aside time to reflect on the decade past and the decade ahead.  I had a hunch that 2010 was going to be a life-changing year for me… and I was right.  That New Years Eve, I set the intention to live a ‘bigger, smaller life’.  I didn’t know exactly what that would look like, I just knew I wanted my life to be filled with more of the things that mattered, and less of the things that didn’t. On Thursday, I boarded a plane to finish out the year on a three-month self-made spiritual pilgrimage to Thailand…  a dream that wasn’t even formed as an idea that New Years night. And yet, it perfectly embodies a bigger, smaller life…

Thoreau wrote, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately… and see if I could not learn what it had to teach me, and not, when I come to die, discover I have not lived.”

I too have come to Thailand to learn what it has to teach me… about the things I have come to realize matter most – my relationship with God, my relationship with the ones I love, my relationship with my Self, and my contribution to the world.  I have come so that I too may know that I have been a good steward of the life I have been given, by stepping more fully each day into the person I was put on this earth to be… By becoming the person I have imagined.