Wow - can this really be true? We are leaving for Europe in 10 days and Karel and I will be racing Ironman Austria together on June 29th!
This will be my 8th Ironman (thank you body!) and Karel's 2nd Ironman.
After spending a week in Klagenfurt Austria we will be spending a week in Znojmo, Czech Republic to spend time with Karel's mom and dad. This will be Karel's 2nd time back to Czech Republic since 2000 and the last time was last May when we traveled together for my first trip to Europe.
It's hard to summarize how I am feeling right now mentally and physically with everything that has gone on in our life in the past few months. I'm sure many people can relate to my situation of life changing in an instant, a lot of big changes happening around the same time and a lot of changes happening over a period an extended period of time. I won't deny it that there have been a lot of life changes for me lately.
My dad and I shared a great passion for life, where we loved making memories just as much as we loved the experiences and opportunities that we created (and were given to us) in life.
Although my life has certainly been disrupted in many ways over the past few months, I haven't forgotten (or pushed aside) the things in my life that make me smile.
Even though I can no longer make my daily phone call to my dad to tell him about my day, I can not stop living the life that my dad loved to share with me and that I loved to share with my dad.
I believe that the most important lesson in life is to love life and many times, this requires us to not give up when times are tough and life doesn't seem fair.
If we want a life that makes us smile and makes us happy, we must remember that there is no such thing as a perfect life.
Many situations in life just suck and are not fair. And as we all know, life sometimes has really bad timing.
But that's life.
You can't control situations but you can control how you deal with them.
If we don't give up on life, we have the ability to make a lot more memories in our future than if we would thrown in the towel and convince the mind that it just isn't worth it, it won't ever happen or it won't ever work.
Life is going to continue for us even when bad things happen. But I hope that if you have a situation in life (now or later) that is troublesome, that you do not consider even the thought of giving up.
Never give up on your goals or your dreams for you only have one chance at life and I know my dad would agree that ever day is worth living, especially if it is a day when you can make some fantastic memories.
