As the sun set on our a lovely day, this person stood on the beach and looked as if he was standing on the edge of a pathway…we are all on a journey and people may come and join us for parts of it, maybe change our course a bit, but at the end of the day, we are on our own.

Today’s affirmation:

Today I give with love.

Today is my brother-in-law’s birthday and my sister organized a surprise beach celebration. I LOVE birthdays and I LOVE surprise birthday celebrations. Which means I hate it when people spoil a surprise. I almost ruined everything on Thursday night, forgetting he was in the car and talking about having to walk with sunblock to the beach. Anyways, my sister passed it off as something else and we were able to successfully surprise him.

I chose today’s affirmation because I knew I would be around my family and some of my closest friends and I really wanted to be present in the moment. I wanted to tap into the love I knew would be all around me today and let it flow though me. We were also celebrating my little cousin’s success at the SEA he got his first choice school: Hillview College. So very proud of him.

There were many special moments during the course of the day that were treasures and I was being mindful of giving time and attention, which for me means love. I could count the time I spent with one of my friend’s son who is under-5 and wanted to play in the water while his Dad was playing football on the beach. We spent an hour playing in the shallow and I think I was more excited seeing him experience such a simple probably overlooked pleasure, than he was. His exclamation, “Ugh, SALTY!” when some water got into his mouth and his expression were priceless.

I could count the time and effort spent organising the day itself. I could count the whole day as a gift to myself, it was such lovely day in the sun. While all those moments or gifts are special, it was during a conversation I had with my friend Lucy, punch-drunk from the sun and sea that I realised what the day’s true gift was.

I met Lucy through a friend of a friend, who I saw in person only twice. It was such an accidental meeting but it stood out because he and I had different variations of the same name and his sister and I had the same name. Vernette is a pretty unusual name in Trinidad and I like to think the world over, so when I heard there was another Vernette in Trini as well, this was obviously a meant-to-be friendship.

He told me about 3 months ago that a friend of his was coming to Trinidad for a couple of months and he wanted me to meet her and spend some time with her while she was here. A Facebook friend request, BBM pin exchange and a couple of Skype calls later, Lucy and I were hitting it off. Excitement was brewing on both sides of the world as she prepared to leave London for the Caribbean. When she arrived and we met in person…we were already friends.

Lucy and I being friends, is from a series of events that had any one thing been different it could just as easily not have happened. Our journeys on this earth are really the result of the choices we make. The choices we been making our whole lives, led us to the moment on a beach in Trinidad, brown from the sun, mellow from beer and a good curry (my Aunty really put her foot in that pot, I’m still licking my fingers) sharing about an experience we were going through unbeknown to the other.

And that was it. That was my gift. That honest, open sharing about that experience was my gift. You know that saying, “people come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime” I always think it sounds cliché but it’s true. Our paths touched at a time when we both needed to hear about each other’s story. It’s hard sometimes to just be in the moment and trust that you are right where you are supposed to be, that everything is happening just as it is supposed to and that you will be ok. But, that is exactly what it is about. Timing is everything.

Bad things, good things, sad things, great things: Stop. Breathe. Breathe again. Bless it. Learn from it. Start again.