We made a decision…

Decisions can be exciting, exhilarating, spontaneous, well thought-out, pleasant, painful, scary, impulsive, or well, the list could continue for a while and the right adjective might never come out in the process. Maybe it’s not the decision that carries all of these endearing qualities, but the understanding that a decision requires an implementation, and that a decision without an implementation is, well, still one that is not a decision. Circular logic? Perhaps, but all the same it seems valid. We made a decision… and that required us taking a good look at ourselves.

We are in the process (not sure this is a valid description as we are really living here now) of moving from the urban area of Miami to a very small town in the mountains of western North Carolina. I have lived in Miami for about 40 years and the change from there to here is vivid! This move involves (directly) me, my wife, our two dogs and our two cats. The reasons for this move, well there are many and I guess they are complicated, or at least we are complicated and that complication is probably one of the “reasons.”

To many of our friends, I’m certain this seems like a impulsive decision, but is was not. We have been thinking and talking about moving to the mountains since 2013. In the spring of that year I had a life changing event. I went to the hospital with chest pains and came out five days later with three stents in my right coronary artery. The procedure that should have taken thirty minutes took ninety with a little heart attack thrown in for added excitement. Afterwards, in the recovery room, my heart stopped beating and a code blue was issued. While I had no pain, my wife and youngest child were standing beside me as witnesses to what was occuring. While I had no control over this event, the image of it has been painful and helped to change my understanding of my life, or at least my, life process.