Life

     Today I was listening to the news while I was having my breakfast.  Those young boys still trapped in that cave in Thailand.  Now one of the rescue crew had died trying to save them.  Almost the entire western United States is being burned to the ground with some 66 different fires raging at the same time.  The heat is supposed to be extremely high again today making firefighting efforts very difficult.  And the eastern United States is being flooded!

     With these perplexing events and others it can be, at times, difficult for a person to look at their own life and enjoy the marvelous daily aspects of living.  Sometimes we forget to pause and “smell the roses” as the expression goes.  But we need to stop from time to time and ponder our own existence so that we can appreciate what we truly have.

     There are times when we feel “so down” on ourselves because we don’t have this or we don’t have that.  But do we truly appreciate the things we DO have?  At times life can put such great pressures on us that it is hard to think that there is anything good in our life.  We are always trying to think of the next thing we can get or the next place we can visit.  And, not that these things are wrong in themselves, but they seem to prevent us from enjoying the moment that we are currently living in and not appreciating what we have!  We learn this pattern at a very young age.

     Take as an example:  When we were young children we may be out with our parents enjoying a lunch at McDonalds (or whatever fast food place you enjoy visiting).  We’re eating our favorite food at this place and at the same time we are asking our parents: “What are we going to have for supper?”  You know you’ve done it!  We’re all guilty of it.  We want to prepare ourselves for what may be coming in the future but we are not really enjoying the moment we are having.  And it doesn’t always have to concern food.  We do the same thing about what are we going to wear, where are we going to visit and so on.

     However if you have ever had an event in your life where you thought it was coming to an end all of a sudden the “small” things seem to be much more valuable to you.  Perhaps it’s only a smile from your mate or your children, that simple little hug for no reason, or maybe just a moment of silence sitting together and enjoying a spectacular view of the scenery.  Whatever the case may be for you those more tender moments have a lot more value in your eyes.

     What we should probably do is attempt to fill our lives with more of those moments and prepare ourselves for what may happen when we no longer have the opportunity to create those moments anew.  I remember the little saying that goes:  “I never appreciated my shoes until I met a man who had no feet.”  Let us always cherish the life we have and never take any moment of it for granted.

QUOTE TO CONSIDER

THOUGHTFUL GEM

"If this life is all there is,

make it the best life you can have."