It’s Monday at 3pm and I’m sitting on a white couch at a hospital waiting for my brother from another mother to wake from his surgery. It made me think a lot about things that I take for granted and the most important thing that I take for granted is; life. If you are like me, you are not a huge fan of hospitals and you feel a bit weird being in one. Being a guest in a hospital is much better than being a patient.
While waiting for his surgery to finish I walked around the hospital, saw people from different walks of life. I had the opportunity to see young babies that were born at 10am today, a guy in his 30s struggling to move his body and an 87-year-old woman lying and taking her last breath. It really made me think about life and how fragile life is.
It’s easy to get caught up in our daily routines and complain about traffic, the wrong shoe size, the weather and other minor things that are not important at all. I hear people complaining all the time about small details that don’t matter, they really don’t. Like really will you care in 24 hours that the barista at Starbucks forgot to put whipped cream on your coffee? I don’t think so. Small things that we complain about drain our energy and we lose focus on the bigger things that matter most. Rather than complaining about how ‘bad’ life is, why don’t we think of the great side of life; we have a life. Stuck in traffic? Why not listen to a new podcast or to a new book, why not call a friend and just say how much you love them and appreciate them? We always choose where we spend our energy, so why not invest in the good and make other people feel good.
Today I learned and reminded myself that if we don’t have our health nothing else matters, like really, it doesn’t matter. We say health is important but do we really truly understand the meaning of it? Looking at my best friend and him struggling to move, eat and go to the toilet made me emotional because when somebody you love can’t move and you can’t do anything about it it really makes you think and appreciate them, and most importantly appreciate life.
Today, I made a promise to myself that I will never complain about anything in life. I have everything that I need, I can walk, I have food, I have family and friends that care about me – what else do I need? Why do I have to always appreciate life when something happens? We can appreciate life today and do the things we need to do today, not when we are lying helpless on a hospital bed. This experience reminded me of when I broke my leg 13 years ago and I couldn’t move. I couldn’t have a shower, I was helpless for more than a month. How quickly we forget things. Every day I’m going to remind myself that life is a bloody blessing. Every day, we wake up and we have the opportunity to do what we want, we have the opportunity to go and do things that we are passionate about, we have the opportunity to show our love to people that we care about, so why postpone it until later? Life is short and I want to live each day like it’s my last day so I can make somebody else’s life better.
So please, let’s use this article as a reminder that life is precious. We never know how long we are going to live on this planet, so let’s love our family and friends from our hearts, not from our need. Life is a precious thing and we should try to be driven by gratitude on a daily basis.
Comment below and let me know one thing that you are grateful for today.
