Life Begins When We Do
“The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.” — W.M. Lewis
It is in our best interest to start living our lives today if we haven't already. Sometime or another we have dreamed of doing something with our lives but haven’t made it real. So what stops us from making our dreams real?
Sometimes we think we have all the time in the world. At least, we thought about that when we were much younger. When we get older, we see that time is no longer on our side, and we feel forced to decide what we want to do in our lives that’s worthwhile.
Some things are better late than never to do. We could never fulfill all our dreams, but if we just pick two or more things to do, then we will see that our lives have begun.
Any Road Will Take You There
“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” — Lewis Carroll
Every trip has a road; we just have to pick one. But not every road is a journey. A road will guide us part of the way, but we have to continue moving through life’s difficulties and situations to complete our journey.
Each day we have an opportunity to go a mile or two. There will be some rainy days, some dry days, and there will be some days with flowers to smell and nice trees to see. The visibility sometimes will be near zero while other times we’ll be able to see the horizon of the earth.
We will meet some interesting people and places along the way. Our journey is where we have our learning times. As we move through our journey or road, we will take with us many experiences so that we will have stories to tell.
The Journey Of Life
“Life is but a journey; death is returning home.” — Chinese Proverb
This proverb is powerful. If we look at our lives as a journey, then it’s really about our experiences. Throughout life’s journey, there are so many things that we have learned, and we will continue to experience new things. Through experience, we learn something about ourselves every day.
We learn about what we like and what we dislike. We learn about our fears, but we have the opportunity to learn to take on our fears with courage. We learn about our emotional pains but have the chance to get to forgive and to heal.
Death is one more experience, in which we have an opportunity to say goodbye to a life well lived with fewer regrets. We can return home to rest for a moment before another journey of life.
Now, Is the Time to Start
If we start now and don’t wait for tomorrow, then we will begin to learn to see progress in our work.
Thinking about how we start the work isn’t enough. Instead, we have to be hands-on so the learning can set in our brain. During our journey, we will discover things we haven’t known before that may be useful to our progress.
Once we begin to see interesting things along the way, we will want to find out more. While we’re away from the work, we will start to look forward to getting back to it.
Continuous Effort
“Continuous effort—not strength or intelligence—is the key to unlocking our potential.” —Winston Churchill
‘Continuous effort’ implies an attitude of determination without giving up. Our potential awakens us when we make a constant effort in our journeys. Strength and intelligence are the by-products of our potential to succeed in our endeavors.
We don’t want to dismiss our strength and intelligence. We want to use them to acquire skills and abilities to fulfill our dreams by unlocking our potentials. We have the keys to developing our possibilities if we continue to make a significant effort to strive forward in our conquest.
Each one of us has the opportunity every day to unlock our potentials. Our potentials are the raw stuff that can assist us in being our best in anything we put our mind to doing.
One Step and One Breath At a Time
“Our way to practice is one step at a time, one breath at a time.”— Shunryu Suzuki
If we practice this lesson in the above quote, we will go a long way in our journey in life. We can accomplish so much if we just focus on one thing at a time instead of trying to rush things along.
We would get more satisfying experiences if we just practice accomplishing our goal one step at a time. We might not have learned a thing quite so well if we had only kept our sights at the far end of the goal.
Achieving our goals always feels good in the end, but the journey is what we will always remember and cherish for the rest of our lives.
Live First, then Make Life Better
It’s all right to make life better, but it's more importantly to live. Sometimes we focus too much on how to better our lives and forget to live our lives.
If we just live, we bring ourselves back into the here and now, the present. We no longer focus on the future or the prize at the end of a journey; we concentrate on living, laughing and having fun with our friends and loved ones.
We stop rushing and racing around trying to get to a destination before anyone else does. Instead, we can stop and pull up a chair and converse with each other and look at things that we missed along our journeys.
The Good Life
“The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.”— Carl Rogers
Life is about a process. A process changes gradually along the way of our lives’ journey. Changes are always inevitable in every area of our lives so we might as well accept them.
When we begin to recognize the process of changes in our daily life, we can manage better our reactions toward them and cope better as they affect our lives. Change will always be continuous and there is no end to them so we might as well stop looking for a destination or a completion or an end to change.
Together We're Stronger
We can only do our best and sometimes our best isn’t good enough. And that’s okay. We all have different levels of growth. No one’s path is the same.
Although we each have to trek through our journey alone, we can travel through our journey together alone. So we don’t have to feel lonely. We can help and support each other along our individual path. We have each other via friendship.
A support system is suitable for everyone, and that includes some of us who prefer to do things alone. We can draw energy from each other when we’re together to help build strength and confidence in ourselves. Together we’re strong; divided we are powerless.