A very formative two years of my life were spent living in Whistler, BC, as, what I would like to call, a professional ski bum. I worked so I could make enough to live, eat and then do all the other stuff I wanted: hiking, biking, skiing and that’s pretty much it. It was two years of my life that I actually learned to enjoy my life and not just anticipate what was coming next. I didn’t stress about how much money I was saving, or not saving, and I didn’t care that I probably would never be able to afford to buy a house or an expensive car or anything in between. What I cared about what spending days off at the lake with my friends, or hiking around the most beautiful scenery I’ve ever seen in all my life, or trying not to fall off my mountain bike and almost skin myself alive (unfortunately this did happen). I learned to appreciate.
This is something that not everyone gets to experience, and I feel really grateful that I took a big leap and moved on my own across the country. Risks like that can, sometimes, be the best decision you’ll ever make. This is something I want to try and instil in all my future students. That saying that we cringe at, you know the one: “stop and smell the roses” – yeah, that’s real. We can get caught up, even as kids, waiting for the next big thing: double digits, sweet 16, legally an adult, etc., etc… I did it, don’t we all do it? But sometime we need to stop and smell the roses, and appreciate everything around us: the land we live on, the people we love, the moments that matter.
