Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? - Mary Oliver
"Your one wild and precious life." How many of us can consider our lives wild? Not "wild" in the negative sense of the word, but wild in the sense of excitement, amazing, fulfilling... does that sound like your life? What about your life being precious? I think that it is pretty safe to assume that we all consider our lives to be precious, yet we don't act like it is.
There are two things which almost everyone considers to be precious: life and time. Both of these things have a direct relationship, yet when we think about our lives, we tend to regard them as though we have all the time in the world to do all the things that we want to do, but for which we keep waiting for "the time to be right." Who determines when the time is right? Why isn't now, or next week, the right time? Why does an indeterminate amount of time have to pass, and four or more variable have to be "just so" for us to do those things? We keep wasting time and in effect wasting our lives, while simultaneously becoming upset about time flying.
The precious nature of life has a lot, if not everything, to do with what we accomplish while we still have it. Accomplishment isn't about promotion, or marriage, or babies, or what type of car you drive. It is less about whether you fly in first class or coach, and more about the fact that you've made it a priority to fly to somewhere, to experience a different culture, and to do something that makes your soul happy. It is less about the need to be married by 27 and starting a family by 30, and more about using every day of every year of your existence to learn more about yourself and what you want, versus what society says you should want.
It's not uncommon for me to hear from palliative patients about the regrets they have, and the thing these regrets all have in common is the time factor. These people were existing when they should have been living. Take a look at yourself through the eyes of someone who doesn't have an infinite amount of time left on this earth. What do you see? Are you living? Are you present in each moment? Not just the culturally significant ones like birthdays and anniversaries, but each moment?
I just have one question for you now, "tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"
Dr. Lesley Reece creates fun, high energy educational clips to teach others about the importance of Palliative Care. When she's not doing that, she's speaking, blogging or vlogging to remind others how to achieve their best possible quality of life!
