Yes, Readers, I will sometimes resort to begging. Now that you’re here, please stay for at least a few moments. Today I am not going to tell you anything you probably don’t already know. I’m going to remind you, though, of some things you may tend to forget when you are busy going about your business, earning your paychecks, running marathons, shoveling the driveway, changing the oil in your car, or changing diapers.
This article is for anyone who has ever lost anybody. This is for anybody who will lose someone. This is for people who have buried loved ones, for those whose loved ones walked out the door, or who simply drifted away from them and made a life elsewhere.
Life is the memory of how you felt when you first fell in love. It is the empty ache you have if a love has been lost, or the searing pain of fresh grief.
This is for all who have had big, spectacular sunset highs, and who have had dark, desolate cloudy times. This is for you.
Life is hard. Life is bumpy. Life stings. Life is the screams we make when descending the scariest parts of a roller coaster ride. Life is the sigh of pleasure we emit when we walk in a rose garden and inhale the deep, sweet scents filling the air all around us.
Life is the silly, mispronounced words our kids say that we still remember 40 years after they stopped saying them, and that we still use daily, no matter how it embarrasses those adult kids.
Life is the joy of watching those kids’ accomplishments, or the heartache of having kids who have chosen destructive paths and are not doing well.
Life is rain on a spring morning that falls softly on your face and makes you smile. It is the feeling of a hot summer’s evening air that reminds you of your childhood, when you skipped happily between your two parents on the way to buy an ice cream cone.
Life is the Mother’s Day breakfast your children made that you could barely choke down, but that was the most delicious meal you ever tasted.
Life is honeysuckle blossoms and also skunks spraying you while you are out walking your dog in the yard.
It’s the way your breath catches when you look at your innocent sleeping baby or grandbaby. It’s also watching your elderly father’s chest barely rise and fall in his hospital bed as he fades away. It’s the oatmeal cookies you bake with your son, and the cake your spouse who has dementia, forgot to put flour in, but presents to you with pride and love.
Life is finding something really cool when you least expect to, learning something new, losing something or someone precious, feeling, shouting, hurting, praying, wanting, laughing, crying, giving, taking, crazy joy and crazy despair.
Life is made up of everyday moments, and not only of big, important events, of births and deaths, weddings or divorces, triumphs and tragedies.
Life is now. It is 1:15 in the afternoon while I am writing this. It is the moment you are in when you are reading this. This moment, the now, is the only thing of which you can be completely sure. Look around you. Drink in your environment wherever you happen to be. Drink in the faces of those you love, if they are with you. Look in a mirror and caress your own face, if there is nobody else around. Love it for what it is showing you at this very time, whether it is smoothness, beauty and peace, or bumps, wrinkles and other imperfections. Love it for its character. This is who you are now, and only now.
Wish and hope for a different tomorrow but be ever-so-careful that the minutes of today are not marching away without your realizing it while you fantasize about what will be in the future.
If you think your now isn’t pleasant, or how you want it to be, keep looking around till you spot something, anything , that is beautiful and good. It may be small and not easy to find, but it’s there. If you don’t try to find it, this moment will quickly be gone and you will never get it back. You will go on but the moment will be lost and the next will be tinged with the shadow of the earlier moment’s dissatisfaction or sadness. Unhappiness gives birth to more unhappiness.
Find someone to hug if you can, and don’t say there isn’t anyone. There’s always someone in every moment who needs a hug. You need a hug.
Want to talk to me about your goals and what you need? I want to help. Why not drop me an email at
ir**@vi*******************.com
. We can set up a time to talk, free of charge. I
