The best thing you could do for anyone that you love, is be happy!

 

Yesterday was my 10th wedding anniversary. Though to anyone outside of my marriage, it would appeared to have been any other day.

 

There were no cards or gifts, no getting dolled up to go out for a fancy candle-lit dinner. In actual fact, my husband and I only saw each other long enough to have a hug, a kiss and to say goodnight.

 

From outside our very solid partnership, it may appear as if we have fallen out of love, lost our spark, or worse. Au contraire!

 

You see, my husband and I are both going through an extremely busy and somewhat stressful period in our lives. We discussed traditional and modern 10th Anniversary gifts we could buy for each other, and what we might do to celebrate. We both came to the conclusion that it was one more unnecessary task on our burgeoning ‘to do’ lists. Participating in the traditional anniversary expectations was an added stress that neither of us needed nor wanted. And more to the point, neither of us felt the need to do these things in order to express our love for one another.

 

So we both agreed that the most loving thing we could do to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary was absolutely nothing!

 

For our special day, my husband went to work came home did a little housework and enjoyed some peace and quiet and a glass of wine with his dinner. I flew home from an interstate work trip in time to drive straight to my yoga class and arrived home at bedtime. We gave ourselves, and each other, permission to do what we really wanted to do not what tradition dictates we should do.

 

My dear friend Green Queen wrote about a similar situation in her recent She Brisbane article which you can read here. I totally agree with her sentiments. Sometimes the wisest decision is to buck all trends and social expectations and do precisely what your heart tells you.

 

Being true to ourselves, and totally honest with each other, was in actual fact the best anniversary present either of us could receive.

 

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Sulphur-crested Cockatoos. © Renee Chamberlin all rights reserved.

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I can tell you from experience the effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is.

 

 

Have you ever stopped to think about the impact you have on other people’s lives every single day? Sometimes it’s tangible and you are fortunate enough to see the evidence of it, but in many cases you will never know how something you did or said has touched a person’s life.

 

Somewhere out there is a woman who through the simple act of hand-raising an orphaned Kangaroo changed my life. 

 

As a child it was clear that I was an “animal person” but one seemingly inconsequential moment turned animals from an interest into a life’s passion and career for me. 

 

On one of my family’s regular weekend jaunts to the Gold Coast, Mum and I went to browse the shops while my Father and Brother stayed at the beach to make the most of the waves.  At one shop we wandered into, there was an orphaned kangaroo joey peeking out from the back room. I was instantly besotted with this little creature which was only just learning to stand up, and sat on the floor watching it wobble, scratch and stretch while my Mum perused the dresses. The shop assistant explained that she was often called upon by the local wildlife sanctuary to look after the orphans until they could be released back to their natural habitat. I was so taken with the joey that I demanded my Mother take me to the sanctuary on the spot and find a joey for me to take home and hand-raise (there are so many things wrong with this given what I know now!) 

 

After some clever verbal sidestep, we drove home sans orphan, however my wonderful Mother sought a more suitable outlet for my new passion. The following school holidays I started as a volunteer at Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. I loved every minute of it and spent my entire weekends and much of my school holidays there until I was old enough to be employed. That was the start of over 10 years working in zoos, a zoology degree, and a further decade (so far) of educating others about animals and the environment and training similarly passionate people to pursue a career in the industry.

 

Fast forward to a few months ago, when a little voice inside my head said “start a daily Face book post called 100 days of gratefulness”. I’m not entirely sure where this voice came from and why it was telling me this, but I have been working on paying closer attention to my intuition. So for the next 100 days I wrote a daily post about one thing I am grateful for on Face book. This is nothing new, plenty of social media pages exist where people are doing similar exercises, usually to help promote a book or inner peace or something. My purpose was simply to honour my directive, nothing more, so it never bothered me that I didn’t receive a huge number of likes or comments. Over the last few weeks, however, so many of my friends and family have taken the time to inform me that they enjoyed reading and gained so much from my 100 days of gratefulness posts. I didn’t realise just how many people were actually reading them!

 

If someone has had a positive effect on your life and you haven’t told them yet, what are you waiting for? There may come a day when you wished you had have but it’s too late. If it were possible, I’d so love to track that shop assistant down and show her just how many lives she has touched!

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select "Anonymous" or "Name/URL" if you don't have a google account.

 

 Superb Fairy-wrens. © Renee Chamberlin all rights reserved.

Image available as prints, canvases, cards and more. To purchase click here