We are so often reminded of the meaning and purpose of life when it’s on the brink of leaving us. When we’re about to lose something we love or someone we love. Those are the moments that reinforce how precious time is, how valuable human connection is, how important it is to just be yourself.
I’m someone who used to wear an evil eye pendent on my wrist every time I traveled. I wrote down a list of my desires a few months back, and to this day, I still repeat them to myself as often as I can. I say a prayer every time I hear sirens coming from an ambulance.
Every day at noon, I stop what I’m doing and take three deep breaths to remind myself to be where my feet are. I give one person a “gift” each day, usually silent well wishes— most times, just my words. At the end of every night, I go to bed saying three things I’m grateful for that have nothing to do with me and then three things I’m grateful for that happened to me during the course of the day.
Some of the best things in life we cannot quantify. There’s no hard evidence to support why we love laughing until we can’t breathe, spending time with people who we can be our whole selves with, and loving the people, places, and moments that make up our time.
Those are the world’s gifts to us. The ones we can choose to willing accept or cast aside as the byproduct of this journey and appreciate only when we’re at the end.
I fear that we forget how silly this game is. How we put value on a piece of paper which determines if we die of hunger or have a meal on our plate. We need to ingest a clear liquid every day to stay alive, and we live on a floating ball in the middle of who knows what. None of this really makes sense. Just look at how we got here.
So, I choose to believe, choose to hold onto hope, choose to practice these little habits and exude energy into things that are usually not tangible or quantifiable.
I’m not sure that at the end of my life these daily practices of mine will amount to anything significant. I’m not sure it will determine my fate or afterlife, but I also think that if it could mean nothing, then it could also mean something. If none of the well wishes, prayers, silent gifts, or kind words get me into the next life, the worst that happens is I get to say I gave away all the love I could to people and causes that deserved it.
Choose to breathe life into what you can, quantifiable or not, because if you ask me, the cost is worth all the well wishes in the world.
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