On December 24th I went to church with my family in my hometown as we do every Christmas. The priest is the same every year, the one who also held my confirmation and our wedding. This year he talked about how the catastrophes all over the world can make one reflect on, and appreciate, ones life more. Appreciate that we are able to pull our cold feet up on the sofa and under a blanket, while watching millions of people freezing and starving on the news. That we are able to run, walk and play while the person next to you in the bus is sitting in a wheelchair. And his speech touched me. This isn’t to say that we need other people to be miserable in order to feel good, but it was his way of saying that: You never know when your own world is going to change. You don’t know if you’ll be here tomorrow and you most certainly have no clue of what your life will look like in five years. We make all these plans all the time – hell, I’m one of those people who spend insane amounts of time planning my life – but who knows if they’re ever going to become possible or come true?
One sentence he said that just got to me, even though I’ve heard it a thousand times before, is “Every second is precious”. He repeated it a couple of times and somehow his integrity and honesty (he’s the most kind and giving person I’ve ever met) just made it sink in a bit deeper. Try to stop what you’re doing right now and ask yourself: If I had only 1 year to live, would I be doing what I’m doing right now? Or would I rather spend time talking to my husband/playing with the kids/baking a pie for the family next door/reading a book? I know that this is an exercise you’ve probably been presented to hundreds of times before, but do you ever really use it? I don’t. Most of my days fly by in a haze while running from home to work, from one meeting to another, from work to the supermarket… If you see a pattern in things you want to do, why not just do it? I seriously believe that we would all live better lives if we remembered that we are going to die someday, on a regular basis.
So here’s to living by the rule that each second is precious and unique! I’ll do my best to stick to it…
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