Tuesday, June 14, 2011


Get busy living or get busy dying.
This is a known phrase but so easily forgotten.
So often life is busy living for us.
As I sat in the hospital waiting for my daughters therapy session to finish (for post traumatic stress after her horse accident). I literally read this phrase and stopped reading and looked around to gather my thoughts. Was I really living?
A lady was sitting by us and she was dressed in an all blue uniform, in assumption she was either a theatre nurse or maybe a surgeon. In the space of her lunch break she was reading her book whilst having her tall black and sandwich. I really took note of the living part of her day right there. You might be thinking, wow she is reading a book and eating so what? But to me it was like in reading her book, she was allowing some time for herself. Taking her thoughts away from her day job, which in my opinion would be highly stressful, and paying some attention to an action that is enjoyable. As small as this action is, this is what i call living.
If she went on her lunch break and sat an ate without a distraction, she could procrastinate about what she needs to do when she gets off her lunch break, then what she might be cooking for tea, then needing to go to the bank and pay a bill and.....well you get it. I am just guessing that she would procrastinate if not reading but if she was the type to switch off her mind and meditate and enjoy each bite of her sandwich. This too would be living. Enjoying the moment instead of letting life get away from you.
Then I wondered does she get frustrated with getting into a really good book and having to close it to get back into theatre for her next lot of surgeries? Does she feel annoyed that that is the only quiet time in her day to read because when she gets home she has to clean the house, run the kids to sports and iron the big pile of ironing that is piling up. I guess after all this pondering what I am really getting at is the living is really how you perceive it. Are you enjoying your life balance? This lady might actually get up really early to go for her morning run as she likes nothing more than crisp fresh air in the morning and the time to herself. She may then go off to work and serve the people. Come home and share a meal with her family and enjoy the chatter over the dinner table. After tucking the kids into bed at night she might share time with her husband by the fire and go to bed feeling like she has had a really great day.
After all this pondering and dreaming about what this ladies life might be like, it really made me realize that of course life is what you make it. It is also how you perceive it to be.
If you see joy in the smallest of things and have a balance, life can be good and life can really feel like you are living it and not the other way around.
For me with this illness, sometimes it feels like the choice is out of my hands sometimes. Finding balance is difficult when I have so much time it is hard to fill in all the gaps. But if I hold on to the idea of perception, I question am I lucky? I get to finish my book in one sitting if I choose.
If I was (able) again, I can tell you that I would find balance and I would really make sure that I found time for joy even if it was reading in my lunch break. I would live life to the fullest.

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