Splendid living begins not with a plan but with a YES
It was 9 p.m. the night before my birthday.
I have already changed into my pajamas, deep in thoughts working on my Inspiration from 9,000 Miles Away book. Somewhere outside my office I heard the soft opening and closing of doors — the kind of sound I’ve heard many times before when someone made a delivery.
Seconds later, my husband called me from the living room to come out.
I sleepwalked out, my mind was still in my manuscript. It took a full two seconds for the screams of Happy Birthday to land.
There, grinning ear to ear, were my brother, his wife, and two dear friends who had flown in from Seattle to Las Vegas to spend the day with me. They had planned it in secret and pulled it off completely. I stood there in my pajamas, still half in a daze, trying to catch up to the moment.
The next morning, I treated them to breakfast at the Wynn hotel on the strip. We opened a bottle of champagne earlier than anyone would admit was appropriate, yet totally appropriate for that morning. And somewhere between the French bubbles, shared lox board, and my hot chicken and waffle, I gave my thank-you toast and heard myself say — nonchalantly yet resolutely, joyful yet committing, as if the words had always been there:
I am going to live my five most splendid years.
It was something I had been thinking about for months. But that morning was the first time I said it aloud. Something about the champagne, the people I loved, the floating lightness — all of it created the space where what had been forming quietly inside could finally find its voice.
That special moment was when Five Most Splendid Years™ began to take shape — not in a moment of sudden inspiration, but in a quiet conviction that had been building long before I had words for it.
A year later, I have come to understand something about the way splendid living works.
It does not announce itself. It gathers. And one day — sometimes over champagne, sometimes at 5 a.m. — it speaks.
Splendid living begins not with a plan but with a yes.
And sometimes the YES has been inside you longer than you knew.
Why Splendid?
Once in a while, a simple line stays with us because it so effortlessly encapsulates an idea. One of mine came from a decades-old movie:How many ten years do we have?
I recognized at my age, not many. Not even many five years.
I was looking for a word to capture what I wanted my next chapter to feel like — something boundless, joyful, aspiring, and not yet lived.
On a morning walk under the brilliant desert sky, it came to me: Splendid.
I like how it carries no obligation, only strokes of freedom that new life chapters deserve. I like how it simply asks whether we feel alive — whether the years ahead feel genuinely worth saying yes to.
Why Five Years?
My father passed away at forty-four. More than others, it makes me think about mortality.
It makes me think that we have more time than we imagine, and less than we want.
He had four ten-years. I have already lived past that.
Not many five-year chapters remain. But enough.
Enough to rekindle a dream.
Enough to say yes to an improbable inspiration.
Enough to make the years ahead the ones you will look back on and call splendid.
Your five most splendid years are not behind you.
It begins with a yes. YOUR YES.
Story Behind the Project
I did not know it at the time. But my life changed at 5 a.m. one winter morning.
A voice crossed oceans and found me in my own home — a Macanese singer I had never met, singing in a language I left behind fifty years ago, performing on a stage I barely knew existed.
I was not looking for inspiration. Yet inspiration found me. It rekindled a dream quietly set aside for decades.
What followed was one year fully immersed in a project and experiences I had never imagined — three weeks in Macau researching for the book, eating an endangered cuisine through the city, a book written and published — that brought me closer to who I am.
To me, it was splendid.
What would yours look like if you said yes to your own improbable inspiration?
What Are Your Five Most Splendid Years?
Every splendid chapter begins differently.
For me, it began with a voice at 5 a.m.
For you, it will be something entirely different — something you have set aside, something that has been waiting, something improbable that arrived when you were not looking for it.
The Five Most Splendid Years™ project exists to help you find it, name it, and say yes to it.
What will your next chapter hold?
Share your story. Join the community. Begin.
[ Share Your Yes ]