Commecialism gives way to thoughfulness.

I saw a YouTube video of a Louis Vuitton advertisement that got me thinking. (aside: this ad did not make me want to buy anything Louis Vuitton. Rather it made me asses the things I have in my life - and my closet - and wonder if I really need all of that. Seems to me that their marketing has back fired.)

In any case, the ad shows awesome photography from various places. Through the slides, the following was shown (as text):
What is a journey?
A journey is not a trip.
It is not a vacation.
It's a process, a discovery. 
It's a process of self-discovery.
A journey brings us face to face with ourselves.
A journey shows us not only the world,
but how we fit in it.
Does the person create the journey?
Or does the journey create the person?
The journey is life itself.
Where will life take you?

This sent my mind spinning. Immediately I had so many varying ideas (in answer to "where will life take you?" I wanted to say: To every continent! I want to experience culture, I crave to see new things, I long to see the sun never set during a summer in Alaska, and the sunset over the African plains - among other things.) But I know that the intention was that this question was asking for something deeper.

And so, as Greg and I are in a moment - a journey - that is not all sweetness and lilting of sunrises and sunsets (rather, we are counting the sunrises and sunsets until we're all back together as one family), I have been caught thinking about what this journey is teaching me about myself. And about what this journey is teaching Greg. And about what it is teaching us as a family.

[Another aside: perhaps when I was younger, I read the last pages of the mystery books first, and then the story. At least, I feel like that's what I'd like to do right now: read the part about what I am going to discover about myself, and then live the moments up to it. I know, it's backwards.]

So, that's what I've been doing lately. Thinking.