When the Earth was in the same relative position to the sun 45 revolutions ago, a baby boy was born at the southernmost point of a continent called Africa. The Earth did not stop, or even pause as it continued its solitary journey.

Yet the baby grew up and made his own journey. Cape Town to Sydney to Tokyo to New York. Via Jerusalem, Johannesburg, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Nice, Geneva, Munich, Salzburg, Milan, Rome, Athens, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Singapore, Bangkok, Phnom Penh, Saigon, Hanoi, Vientiane, Sapporo, Kobe, Nagano, Kuala Lumpur, Borneo, Berlin, Barcelona, Prague, Budapest, Vienna, Venice, Malta, Sicily and hundreds of places in between, all filled with wonder, sights, tastes, experiences and joys.

But it’s not the journey that matters most, it’s the people and the friends that share in the journey that are most important and valued. Without them, the journey would be as empty as Earth’s mindless rotation around the sun, and the experiences we treasure most would never have happened.

The joyous experiences are wonderful, the pains too. The jokes, the meals, the arguments, the quiet times, and the losses, all wonderful, all combine to fill me out as better person who never journeys alone.

My 45 revolutions are full of wonderful experiences, full of you. All of you. Thank you.