LIVING BEYOND THE NUMBERS...

While we are not all given the same number of days, we ARE all provided the same number of hours each day.  Some seem to find limitless ways to spend their hours while others invest their limited hours in ways they can spend up to but never beyond their limits.  We are not promised or guaranteed any changes in life other than change itself – nor are we promised any level of greatness, success, achievement, accomplishment (emotional satisfaction, personal gratification...or whatever you choose to seek within this unpredictable world) other than the level we establish USING the talents and gifts we have been provided.

This past year has been one of darkness – one in which far too many individuals have been plucked from this earthly journey to begin the next far sooner than we might have wished or anticipated – often without finishing all they had started (or even before they could start all they had hoped to accomplish).  While we prefer the light of day, it is often the threat (or realization) of darkness that awakens us to the reality of our fragile existence – that makes us recognize our days may be numbered.  Such an unavoidable limitation, however, should not mean that our accomplishments must be diminished, our contributions to life reduced, our personal joy buried or the difference we make in the lives of others put on the shelf for fear of it interrupting our personal “master plan.”  Rather we should work hard to identify our gifts, talents and abilities so that we might be able to fully leverage them as we live the life we want rather than accepting what others might want us to be, how they want us to act and how we might be expected to serve their needs when and how they might dictate.  While life may not be too short to accomplish what we truly plan to do and invest ourselves in accomplishing, it is too short to live our lives as others might expect and demand if such actions negatively impact our ability to be fulfilled within the life we have been given.

How do you use YOUR gift of time?  Are you a productive and contributing part of life’s solutions or a disruptive part of its problems?  Are you a dreamer seeking new roads that have yet to be traveled or one content to rest on the laurels of past success and accomplishment – stifling all desire to identify new horizons?  Are you a seeker of opportunity or an opportunist awaiting the next windfall?  Are you one who seeks pleasure and joy in life or one from whom life seems to suck all pleasure and joy that might come your way?  Do you find yourself constantly doing what you may not want to do in order to avoid conflict or confrontation or are you able to remain true to yourself while you help and assist others?  Our perspective on life will color our reality, establishing the backdrop for all that we are and hope to become.  It will serve as a launch pad from which those we influence are able to move forward.  The longer we live we find that the “falling” in life is not the most significant obstacle we face – rather it is the choice we make of either “getting up” and the “moving on” (or the staying down and awaiting attention) that makes us who we are. 

We tend to fulfill our potential – to establish and maintain control over where we are and what we do – when we intentionally act upon our thoughts or ideas.  We allow ourselves to be controlled by another’s thoughts, ideas, individual desires or unexpected circumstances when we choose NOT to act (either intentionally or inadvertently) to new opportunities or challenges.  Our days ARE numbered – as this past year’s pandemic has clearly and directly pointed out to each of us.  Do not let the way that those days are lived – or the joy you are able to receive from living them to their fullest – be diminished by allowing your life to be lived solely for someone else – for their pleasure and benefit – or you will no longer be able to make the difference (nor experience the joy) that living life to the limits of the days we are given provides.