Emma 2013-01-16 -- 30 years old

Emma you are in one of the very best and most fullfilling stages of life – The initial period of preparation for life is finished – the starting out chapter is also over. Emma - This is life!! As parents our greatest hope is that you are getting the very best and the very most out of it – That is what its is all about.

Years ago I heard a story about a musician that was asked to play the violin for some of his friends – The violin he was given wasn't as perfect as he wished, and spent all his time tuning it and adjusting it, and tuning it again – until his freinds left to go home – without ever hearing the wonderful tunes they knew he was capable of playing.  Emma, sometimes we must be satisfied with less than perfect circustances -  to play our less than perfect tones – in the perfect beauty and harmony of a wonderful and meaningsfull life.

Emma we are proud of you, and proud of every single day of the 30 years in your life that have already been moved into the great archive of 'yesterday'. These are the things that have made you the person that you are today – and we are glad for every one of them.

I have noticed an interesting and perhaps significant aspect of  life that I would like to share with you.

Daily life is full of little things – every day little things happen, and little choices are made – many of them seem trivial and unimportant, and some of them are – Some of them do seem to be more important and we try to use our whole capacity, and all the wisdom we have, to wisely choose. Sometimes even then, the choice that is made is mostly by guess. There are some other things seem to be determined for us by chance and fate, or by forces outside our control, and our only choice is to accept them willingly or unwillingly. This is life and Emma I am quite sure that your 30 years has given you sufficient insight into life to know what I mean!!

The paradox of life is that it often isn't before many years have passed and we look back on the road we have traveled, that we understand which choices were the defining ones for the meaning and course of our lives,  -- And then  of course,  we can also understand the many choices and worries (and tears) that in all reality, pretty much have completely lacked significance.

I am going to show you a picture of a house, and tell you a little story that I have put together in my mind to illustrate this point. This is the house in New Brunswick in Canada where your great-grandmother grew up as a girl. I don't know for sure, but likely one of these windows you see on the second floor was to her bedroom, and that in this bedroom was a bed, where most likely she sometimes  layed, and hoped and planned and dreamed of a future. 1905 she would have been 15 years old and likley read in the newpapper about a province being formed 5000 km further west in Canada, called Saskatchewan. An enormous area nearly empty of people. An undeveloped frontier that needed young people to build new communities and live new lives. Maybe her choice to keep this thought in mind, was made laying on her bed, behind one of the windows in this picture. Just think of it!!  Although I am sure she didn't realize it then, those little thoughts have changed the world – over a hundred people in western Canada – and a few even here in Sweden that wouldn't have existed at all  except for those little thoughts composed in a 15 year old girls mind laying on her bed – in the house in this pix. Little thoughts and little choices can be  important.

Emma, you will never know until years down your road, which choises you are making and will make, that will be the ones that will be the defining ones in your life, and the choices that perhaps will  even change the world – so treat them all with care. Don't be afraid to choose – and don't take yourself to seriously .. but treat all the little choices and the little dreams of each day with respect – Your choices have already changed the world for some of us – and I am sure that they will continue to do so.

Emma, we are wishing you all the very best in the  '30 plus' chapter that has begun in your life.

From your dad and mom and the rest of your family,

 

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