It’s been four full years since I retired from my legal career, and all I can say is “Wow!”  In only my wildest dreams could I have imagined how wonderful life can be when we pursue what brings us joy. Perhaps the single most impactful lesson I’ve learned is that our wildest dreams are, in fact, our reality, and the first step in aligning yourself with your desired reality and to really fall in love with your everyday life is to fall in love with yourself; for when you fall in love with yourself, you feel deep in your core that you are worthy of everything your heart desires.

So let me back up for a moment.  About 6 – 7 years ago, I started seriously entertaining the notion of leaving the practice of law to pursue my joy.  In order to combat the pressures and stresses of a job that I knew was not physically, emotionally nor spiritually sustainable, I immersed myself fully in mindfulness, meditation and yoga. The wisdom traditions taught me that our outer world reflects our inner world, and by cultivating and practicing inner peace and harmony, and unconditional love for ourselves and everything around us, our outer world will reflect those qualities back to us.

This is not just hyperbole. I can attest from experience that this is truth.

As I floated the idea of leaving this 30+ year career to my friends and loved ones, the immediate reaction was concern and fear: “what are you going to do for work?” and “how are you going to make money?” and “do you have enough money in the bank?” I was 55 years old and, according to society, was much too young to retire from a steady paycheck in order to embark on a life that many viewed as directionless and frivolous. 

What??

How can someone be “too young” to pursue their joy? 

If not now, then when? Tomorrow is not promised to any of us, yet we justify our present unhappiness or lack of fulfillment by moving the goalpost to some indiscriminate marker in the distance that we may or may not reach, and that may or may not be the marker that defines our happiness. We structure our lives based on pre-determined notions of what happiness looks like, when we will achieve it, and how it will be achieved (usually with money and “financial security.”)

Which is why my seemingly directionless life seemed to so many to be counter-intuitive to the American Dream. I was in my mid-50’s and closing in on “retirement age,” so why would I want to risk my savings and security by jumping off the train now?

Because “not all those who wander are lost.”

I first came across this quote from J.R.R. Tolkien quite a few years ago, and it stuck with me, always tumbling around in the back of my mind until it became a mandate, a kind of force majeure that would not let go until I gave in to the promptings of my heart that wandering was the way–my way–to awakening.

So I lept headfirst into a wandering life. After leaving the structure of a law practice, with its deadlines, client demands, and rules, I did a complete 180. I took stock of what it was that I truly wanted to do, and in the past four years I :

• Published a novel
• Walked the Camino Portuguese
• Traveled to Madrid
• Traveled to Guatemala and immersed in the Mayan culture
• Sold my house
• Bought a van
• Am traveling the country with my trusty co-pilot, Oliver in said van,

And so much more. More experiences, more joys, more connections, more love.

A spiritual awakening.

In short, I have discovered Me in my wanderings, the Divine being that inhabits this temporary body, and who absolutely adores this incarnation and the souls with whom I am honored to share it.

And I am excited for some exciting new experiences on the horizon.

So I ask you:  where do you want to wander?