Going places to meet unknown people, unknown cultures and unfamiliar situations. I find it challenging and it makes me feel alive.

I am so fortunate to be in a deeply loving relationship. He lives at the opposite side of the globe. Melbourne < > Amsterdam. We travel many miles to see each other. And we are so fortunate to be able to see each other often. Which is great. Back home I look after my 14 years old daughter. The 21 years old one is looking after herself. Which is also a very fortunate situation. In Amsterdam I teach yoga. Which I love. While traveling I upscale my yoga practice. By attending yoga classes in foreign yoga studios. Which is pretty fucking awesome.

If anyone would have asked me eight years ago if I would love to live this life, I’d smile broadly and grab the opportunity with both hands. Even more, it’d be a dream come true.

The dream is true. But the reality of it is not one would expect it to be. Or at least my reaction to and feelings about this dream-come-true are not as I expect them to be. I certainly don’t find myself in a constant state of bliss. Quite the opposite. No matter how much I love being with my partner, love looking after my 14 years old, love teaching yoga and love to travel the world, life is forever challenging as can be.

I worry about my children’s happiness, about money, the health of my partner, my family and myself. I worry about relationships with friends and family. I don’t get to worry much about the state of the world, politics and climate change. Which turns against me. Because not worrying about it actually seems worrying in itself. And most of all I worry about myself. Doubting myself, do I do the right thing? Am I looking after my kids, my partner and my life as good as possible? With my life I mean, the life thrown at me on this planet. Do I live it as potent as possible? While focusing 95% of my attention on things that need to be done or can be improved. Every day. Satisfaction and contentment seem to present themselves as enemies to my existence.

So what gives me the right to exclaim ‘Love the life you live!’?

The experience that no matter how fantastic my life seems to be or how bad, it doesn’t change feelings of overwhelm, depletion, satisfaction, contentment or happiness from occurring.

What strikes me about it is that unlike what we think creates feelings of happiness – for example the security of a nice house or the health and prosperity of our children, moments of happiness occur when there’s nothing to strive for, when there’s no expectations or when there’s a sense of acceptance of everything that is.

How to trigger or induce such moments? And here I won’t give any of the best-selling answers our book stores are filled up with until the highest shelf and the internet can’t be stopped overflowing from. Treaties on how to do this or how to not do that, preferably quick and simple solutions to live one’s best life. It doesn’t exist. There’s no worse, better or best life. There’s just one life. You are living it. The only potential, the only option, the only choice or whatever you prefer to call it, is the life you live now. Complete, truthful, real, uncompromising, straightforward and happening every split-second.

Listen to it, see it, feel it, taste it, hear it, enjoy or despise what it does to you. But most of all open up to it, do not resist, accept it. Let it in, like water flowing into the bath tub you sit in. Warming the bones of your body, lubricating your soul, slowly transforming the skin of your fingertips into old people’s wrinkles. Did you know that the wrinkly skin on your fingertips and toes as a result of soaking long enough in water, is actually a biological phenomenon that enables you to hold more grip on slippery surfaces!

Life is as beautiful as it is devastating. Like love. Like you. Like the oceans. Like the climate. Like group energy and the ostracizing power of an individual.

Love the life you live. For no other reason than it being impossible to actually truly interact with it in any other way.