Love, love, love this amazing reflection and wisdom born of experiencing and living from eighty-five year old Nadine Stair who wrote If I Had My Life to Live Over:
You see, I’m one of those people who live sensible and sanely hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I’ve had my moments and if I had it to do over again, I’d have more of them. In fact, I’d try to have nothing else. Just moments, one after antoher, instead of living so many years ahead of each day. I’ve been one of those persons who never goes anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat and a parachute. If I had it to do again, I would travel lighter than I have.
There is such richness in being alive and experiencing your life fully. We live in such a busy time and are so often running from point A to point B but joy is all around us. It can be a challenge to find it but we really must place value and priority on being alive and infusing love into our lives.
Recently, we met a fellow named Dean who shared that he had lost his wife to mouth cancer. In his effort to remind us how fleeting life can be, he also told us to seriously stop stressing about the small stuff and to simply treasure the lives that are around us. When I say this, I mean your sweet loves, your family members, your kids, your dear friends. He urged us to turn off the distractions (t.v., phones, computers) and sit down with that person and take them in because we never know when we won’t have that person in our life to share time with and we never want to regret missing those moments. He shared about how he and his wife had identified the “Joy Suckers” of life and how he strives to live life now without his wife and without the “Joy Suckers”. He wistfully described how he longed to have just one more day…
There was not a dry eye around the room and tears were streaming down my face and it was all I could do to refrain from blubbering and running off to scoop up my little family. Seriously…unless you know that the clock is ticking…it is so easy to waste our lives or not place value on those who mean the most to us. How easy it is to merely exist through our days going along and taking all our relationships for granted.
Anna Quindlen once said, “Think of life as a terminal illness, because, if you do, you will live it with joy and passion, as it ought to be lived.”
Those words changed me yesterday.
And now…I am starting to write this blog to remind me to live in bliss (believing life is something special). May this space be a reminder to treasure relationships first. To make the time to stay connected. To keep my relationships juicy (read exciting, current, fresh). To give on-going thoughtful attention to actions that nourish relationships. To love out loud for all the world to see.
I hope you will join me on my search to discover ways we can show our loved ones that they matter and that they are so loved in this shared lifetime. In doing so, I think we will be teaching ourselves to live our lives to the fullest and to love this fleeting journey.
