Making our lives count

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.

John Lennon (1940 - 1980), "Beautiful Boy"

I enjoy a good movie. One of my favorite movies with Richard Dreyfuss is "Mr. Holland's Opus"(1995).  The above quote was taken from the movie; a very poignant and touching look at REAL life and if you haven't seen it I would like to HIGHLY recommend it to you. As in real life, the movie takes Mr. Glenn Holland from his young adulthood right out of college to his retirement from being a school music teacher; not the famous career that he had hoped for all of his life. It is as though Mr. Holland was always "working on his Opus" and not until the end of the story, (not a spoiler, don't worry), does he begin to realize that the journey WAS the life that he wanted all along and the destination was not the prize that he was truly seeking. 

 Life's a journey, not a destination.

 Steven Tyler

                                                                                                                                                  (NOW; THIS is a spoiler warning; one of the LAST scenes of the movie)

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"Adult Gertrude Lang:
Mr. Holland had a profound influence on my life and on a lot of lives I know. But I have a feeling that he considers a great part of his own life misspent. Rumor had it he was always working on this symphony of his. And this was going to make him famous, rich, probably both. But Mr. Holland isn't rich and he isn't famous, at least not outside of our little town. So it might be easy for him to think himself a failure. But he would be wrong, because I think that he's achieved a success far beyond riches and fame. Look around you. There is not a life in this room that you have not touched, and each of us is a better person because of you. We are your symphony Mr. Holland. We are the melodies and the notes of your opus.  
We are the music of your life.  

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We have heard that "life is what we make it". It doesn't have to be something that "happens to us", we can intentionally enjoy the daily journey of living, loving and growing and if perchance we "don't quite make our destination", we will be happy knowing that we have enjoyed the journey. It is like being on an Autumn road trip; sometimes it doesn't matter where you are going as long as you are enjoying the scenery along the way.

 

If we "don't' quite make the destination" that we had initially planned, hopefully we can look back on our lives and and say "that was really a good ride".