To Live Like You Were Dying...

Today is Thanksgiving Day.  A time to reflect and appreciate the things we are gifted and blessed with.  I am deeply grateful for the immense amount blessings in my life, but most of all, I am thankful for one more day.  Today.

What if you knew you only had one more day to live... What would you do? What is so important to you that you would do it right away? What if you had only a Week? One Month? One Year?

Today is a day to give thanks and I sure have an immense amount of blessings and gifts to be grateful for, but so much contemplation has also brought home to me that most of us never know how much time we have left. So I have been asking myself these questions: Did I kiss my family goodbye this morning? Did I tell them that I love them? Can I find time to call my sister and tell her how proud I am of her or call my best friend to tell her how much I miss living closer to her?

Did I try my very hardest today to be a good wife, mother, friend? Did I unmistakably express to my family and friends that even when I'm gone, I'll have loved them. I'll have cherished how much they've touched me and made a difference in my life in so many ways? What kind of legacy do I want to leave behind? What kind am I actually leaving behind? What can I change? What can I still accomplish?

Am I wasting precious time on things/thoughts/worries that do not really make a difference in the grand scheme of things? How much more time will I waste instead a playing a board game with my youngest? Talking with my oldest? Enjoy just being with all my children? Laughing with my husband?

I want to not only live every day to it's fullest but to inspire my children to do the same because our time is finite. We are only alloted so much and whether the end is near or far it is still the end of this life.

So will you live like life is a never ending series of events or will you live like you were dying? Will you seize the day and use the gift of tomorrow, if it should come, to accomplish what is most important to you? Or will you waste it on worry? Anger? Frustration? Things beyond your control? Will you wait to do something important until the time is right? Will you wait until the New Year? The next free weekend?

Just a thought.  Happy Thanksgiving, all!

QOTD: "Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows." Pope Paul VI (1897-1978)