How To Appreciate Everyday For The Gift It Is

Written on May 12, 2008 by Tezza

“Your daily life is a temple and your religion” – Khalil Gibran

I know I’ve squandered away many years of my life living up to someone else’s expectation, imagined and otherwise. We’ve all been guilty of that at one point or another. We get sold on this idea of who we should be, what success is and how we ought to live and before you know it you’ve forgotten who you were. How life can so easily be consumed by misplaced obedience.

Whether it’s the house wife who dreamed of traveling the globe, the doctor who wanted to be an artist, the waitress who dreamed of becoming a star. The story is the same. Somewhere along the way we became an unwitting victim in someone else’s story. That “someone” may have been a parent who convinced you that there is no future in painting or society that says that being a good mother and wife required you to sacrifice your dreams. Whoever that “someone” might be in your life, only you can take a stand and decide that everyday is a gift. You can squander it living out someone else’s life or you can live by your own choices and determine your own future.

It’s a daily choice to participate fully in the miracle of life or you can turn it into a constant and daily frustration of repetitiveness and drudgery. What a waste that would be.

1. Live Today Because There Is No Promise Of Tomorrow

Sometimes we need a jolt of reality to remind us of our own mortality. I walked with a Spanish pilgrim who only recently had a heart operation to put two stents in to open up his clogged arteries. Unbeknown to his doctor who had instructed him to rest he decided to go on the Camino de Santiago. He was in his late forties, and even with a heart operation he was as fit as anyone half his age. His zest for life emanates through every moment of his day. Staring death in the face makes you appreciate the fact that if you wake up in the morning breathing than it’s a good day.

Everyday is a gift since we don’t know if tomorrow is ever going to come. The thing is that so many magical moments occur in our everyday but we are so distracted that we never take notice. We rush from one place to another glued to our Ipods, Blackberry’s or just distracted in our own daydreams that life just passes us by. And each day begins to look just like the one before. Take time each day instead to just slow down and fully live the moment. Put your Ipod away and turn off your Blackberry and take in your surroundings, the noise and the smells. The promise of life isn’t in some far off place when you get that luxury car, large screen TV or that house by the lake. Life is all around you, everyday if you would just grab it with both hands.

2. Start Each Day With A Smile In Your Heart

“Why should I be gloomy when I can be glad? There inside of me is a force that makes it’s own weather, winning through thickest clouds to the shining sun.” – J.B. His life and works.

I got the great opportunity to meet inspiring pilgrims on the Camino, some of whom survived a heart attack, cancer and one of my favorite pilgrims from Germany survived a boating accident that severed his spine. Doctor’s told him that he would never walk again but through much pain, struggle and rehabilitation he defied the odds and regained his ability to walk. One thing I realized being around these inspiring pilgrims was that they started each day with a smile on their face and a gladness in their hearts. No matter how difficult the days stage, the weather or any other circumstances of which they had little control over they were amazingly cheerful company. And it is infectious to those around them. If you start the day with a smile, it can be surprising how accommodating the universe can be. Happiness doesn’t come from those around you, life isn’t going to make you happy. Happiness is a daily choice. It begins with your attitude. Live with an attitude of gladness, gratefulness and you’ll be sure to find contentment along the way.

3. Discover Your Passion

“If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track, that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life you ought to be living is the one you are living.” – Joseph Campbell

Have you ever noticed that the times in your life when you truly felt alive occurred when you were passionately consumed by someone, thing or activity. It’s not coincidence that passion brings forth an energy that revitalizes your soul and makes life exciting. If you have never experienced the exhilaration of following your passion then consider this from Fredierick Buechner, “The world is full of people who seem to have listened to the wrong voice and are now engaged in a life work in which they find no pleasure or purpose and who run the risk of suddenly realizing some day that they have spent the only years they are ever going to get in this world doing something which could not matter less to themselves or to anyone else…work that seems simply irrelevant not only to the great human needs and issues of our time but also to their own need to grow and develop as humans.”

Finding your passion and having the courage and strength to pursue it with vigor and wholeness puts you into that small group of people who have found the great elixir of life.

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Posted in Life Balance, Living The Simple Life, Personal Growth