Every Day
Every day I see someone else that I either know or that is a connection to a friend of mine die. And by die I mean die young. It’s such a cliche to say “what would you do differently if you were going to die tomorrow?” It’s an impossible notion to fathom if you aren’t really faced with your own mortality. Yeah. Good morning. Uplifting thoughts to come.
We are constantly racing around, day after day, trying to hold our world together. Who has time to “live life to its fullest”? I mean even if you could, what does that even mean? Am I to celebrate and eat cake all day? Blow off work and go sit on a beach. Shirk any parenting responsibilities and take my kids on a cross country trek? Come to think of it. I would like to see Rock City.
Modern life is a chase. Or perhaps we are being chased by modern life. Regardless (irregardless), pre-modern life was spent gathering berries and running away from predators so I’ll take this version, thank you very much.
I do think daily about what we are all chasing after and what will we do if we ever catch it. Like will there be rest days? Will I one day get there and go “phew. Caught it. This fleeting desperation ran a good race. Only took me 67 years to catch it.” Then I’ll croak 3 days later.
Yesterday I was listening to a podcast and a secondary part of the show revisited a refugee in a Turkish camp who’s been trying to get into a Canadian college. The kid taught himself English but since he didn’t speak Turkish. His grades weren’t awesome. He couldn’t get into one of the schools he was trying to because he was forced to got to a school where he didn’t speak the language. One of the hosts said something to the effect of. “No one is ever going to care about your high school grades again.” While I have known this for 30 years it struck me as to how much pressure we put on ourselves at a young age to achieve. To chase. Yes, I want my kids to learn and do well in school, but it’s about effort. And balance. And living more, not worrying about 9th grade Spanish.
While that may not seem related to how this started, it is. It’s all related because it’s all a question how we spend our time in this world. .How we live while we are chasing life for the better parts of our lives needs to be questioned, because I’m not 100% sure we are doing it right. In fact, I’m 100% sure we aren’t, but damned if I have all the answers. Just the questions.
I started writing this around 4:45 a.m. and then went to catch a run with a friend. I’m in pretty poor run shape so when things for spicy I reflected on this post and about a woman who died too young and thought. “You get to do this. Suck it up.” It was only a moment but moments matter. Recognizing moments and being present in them is all living a more rich life is.
Stacking those moments and consciously looking is all “your best life” can really be.
#hugsandhi5s
