It’s an honor and a joy to write about this life, the journey, and our view of the journey, in the moment and along the way. While life is not always fun, the journey — in all its shapes — shapes us in ways we never could have imagined. Perspective is everything.

So, today, I ask the question — What lens do you use to see the world?

I ask this question in the context of certain dates in our lives that we’ll never forget. Not the dates we take to a party. Life dates.

365 seem like a lot of calendar days for various things to happen. Things that are happy or sad, good or bad and easy or hard.

In my life, calendar dates are likely to be the same — where big things have happened on the same date, different year.  Big things like life and death marking a single date forever indelible, heartbreaking and heartwarming all rolled into one.

How is it that such major events, on the opposite side of life’s continuum, can share the same date?  It can’t just be a coincidence and may very well be a strong mathematic probability.

When I think about the serendipity of two completely opposite emotional events that took place on the same calendar day, it hit me that there must be a reason and a lesson in this.  Maybe the reason is to remind us of the yin and yang of life, the seesaw nature of happiness and sadness, and ultimately, of the choice we must make. The choice to decide what to focus on and the decision to try to look at the negative from a positive perspective.

Ultimately, answering the question – what lens do you use to see the world?