What do you have on your to do list for today? What is so urgent and important that you wake up frenzied, frantic and frenetic? What causes your blood pressure to go up the minute your feet hit the floor and you stumble to the kitchen for your first cup of coffee?
As you search for your keys, you mutter something about life being a race everyday...you're always late...there aren't enough hours in the day to get everything done...everything that determines, at least on the surface, what makes us IMPORTANT. You know we don't have time. We have our Ipad in one hand, Ipod in the other, GPS telling us where to go and how to get there the fastest. All the trappings of 'the good life.' But are they?
My question is does all this stuff excite us, does it stop us in our tracks, does it make us 'exist as though we're existing only for that very experience." as Arthur Krystal states.
I have a friend in Seattle who makes no qualms about it ~ once he was undone by the beauty of an iris growing on a cliff in the mountains! His friends thought he was nuts, but this is what sets him apart. He gets it. He understands. He holds the secret in his head and his heart. For him, as Georgia O'Keefe says, "I think all the world has turned into what I am seeing." This I completely understand. Why not?
Why not have that one thing, place, person who undoes us. That entity that is the world to us. Do you have it? And if you do, do you recognize it?
We all move at warp speed. Seems to me many of us think that the faster we go the more impressive we are to others. True? I guess at one time in my life I could relate to that whole heartedly! But not anymore! It is time to find my iris!
"Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing ~ Of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering."
~Winnie the Pooh
Perspective is what we need. We are just quite simply not all that important. But I can tell you what is! Hundreds of thousands of warriors, who with courage, face each and every day of their lives not knowing if it will be their last.
The tee shirt in the photograph was autographed for me by a Marine. It clearly tells us what is important and what is on his To Do List for that day~ and every day. "To stay awake. To stay alert. To stay alive."
So when the waiter messes up your order, or the maitre d' your reservations, or you are stuck in traffic, please take a moment and remember that our fighting men and women are not complaining! They are existing to live through the experience, the day.
Stop and think what you really have to complain about.