In North America Dr. Seuss is a big part of the young life and imagination of a lot of kids. From children's classics like Green Eggs and Ham and Hop on Pop to, probably his most popular work, How the Grinch that Stole Christmas (also made into a short television animation that plays faithfully every year throughout the holiday season), Seuss is one of those icons of young imagination in North America. I was surprised to find that a lot of people in the UK have never heard of him, or if they have only distantly.
I didn't discover Seuss' Oh, the Places You Will Go until high school when a friend gave me the book as a gift as encouragement for something or other.
Today is your day.
You're off to Great Places!
You're off and away!
This is pretty much it throughout the book only said in different rhymes. In a few pages and a few hundred words it encapsulates what endless self-help books and Dr. Phil episodes are constantly trying to tell us: that as individuals we control our destiny and can do amazing things if we set our minds to it.
Of course I know this is somewhat naive. I am privileged in a lot of ways and I know that were it not for opportunities I'm afforded because of a lot of factors I was lucky enough to get at birth, it would have been much harder to choose then the book makes it out to be. Despite this, I've carried this book around with me for years and whenever I feel like I need a pep talk, I pull it out. It is currently sitting on the bookshelf in the new London flat.
In mid-October I will have been in the UK for a year - first in Cardiff and now in London. When I think about how much my life has changed over the past 12 months and how many things I've been fortunate enough to see and do, my head spins a little. I know that I am really lucky and I am trying my best to not take it for granted and to enjoy it.
In the past year I've moved from Regina to Cardiff and then again to London. I've traveled to around the UK and have been to Berlin, Paris, Istanbul, Indianapolis, New York, Monterrey, Carmel, San Francisco, Yosemite, Calgary, Banff, Lake Louise, Toronto and Niagara Falls. I've met someone wonderful and am really, truly happier then I can ever remember being.
Enough sap. Here are some pictures:
Cardiff, Wales right before I moved to London.
The lavender and genuinely lovely, furry bumble bees in the garden at our new London flat.
Dan and I (reflection) outside a lovely Mexican restaurant last week in the wilds of Northern California, on the drive between Yosemite and Monterrey.
Pretty good year.
