favorite shirt, or focusing on health and vitality while you're stirring a pot of soup. How much time do you spend on actually living, as opposed to mindlessly (and sometimes grudgingly) trudging through the tasks of your daily existence? Do you have an existence, or do you have a Life?
Maybe my mind has turned to mindfulness in living because of the shadows that have fallen over the lives of others recently. My best friend and his wife are, after living healthy and happy for many years, suddenly finding
themselves enmeshed in health issues so extreme that their lives have become notably altered. A close friend passed just a few weeks ago after battling for many years with addiction. Another friend finds himself challenged by cancer. Still another acquaintance of ours died last week after his own valiant fight with the same disease. I've been thinking hard about life lately, about what really matters and what really doesn't, and about how much energy I expend on silly things like a pair of shorts being left on the floor or a carton of milk being forgotten on the kitchen counter. Time is stolen away from us when we fritter the minutes and seconds and hours away on resentment, anger, and just general negativity. I'm not saying we shouldn't feel those emotions. It would be phony and counterproductive to wander through our days ignoring valid emotional reactions to the events unfolding around us simply because those emotions aren't happy ones. What I am saying is that we can acknowledge those feelings and move forward. We can refuse to let them define our entire day, or even an entire hour. We can shift our mind and heart to gratitude and focus on that for a minute or two or five.
We should remember that every moment of life is precious; not one second that has passed can be snatched back and relived. We don't know how much time we have to live, nor are we sure of the challenges up ahead. If we live life as if every moment is a state of grace, then maybe we'll experience true, deep, meaningful life, life well lived.
