Living with Imperativeness

When I was a young teen I saw two lives end in the same week and it changed me.  Looking through photos of their lives I realized that it wasn't that long ago that each of these women was just a young girl like me with dreams and hopes and plans.  How much of those things had come to fruition and how much had fallen by the wayside.  I suddenly saw how very short a time we are all given, some much shorter than others.  I spent the rest of that summer lost in thought.

When I returned to school in the fall it was as a changed person.  Everyone else was the same.  My friends talked about boys and the weekend, and upcoming exams.  I couldn't relate to them anymore (and I didn't try.  How can you explain such an epiphany?  I suppose I'm trying now, but I lacked the words back then.)  For the next year, I stayed lost in thought.  I only slept a few hours a night, it was the beginning of the insomnia that has since followed me for the rest of my life, and when I was awake, the world moved much more slowly, almost as if I was an outsider watching it happen rather than being a part of it.  I saw the patterns, the pathology of it all and I wanted out.

By the time the next summer rolled around I knew I couldn't exist in that system anymore.  I had to get out.  It meant cutting ties and leaving everything behind, but it was a sacrifice I was willing to make because I couldn't live my life in limbo anymore, waiting for things to get started.  I had gained a sense of urgency, a deep regard for the preciousness of each moment, and I've never been able to shake it.  

Ever since that first step, I have spent my life living on my own terms, doing everything that I felt mattered so that whenever my life reaches its end, I will go without having to utter those "saddest words of tongue or pen: it might have been."   I will have lived my life to the very fullest.  That used to mean big things like travel and other life experiences.  Now it means smaller things like making time to talk with and teach my children all the things I know, and to reach out to the people I love so that if I should disappear from this life tomorrow there would never be any question in their minds that they were truly loved and valued.  And, yes, it also means taking great enjoyment in putting on a beautiful dress and spending the time and care to throw a little party just because.

Don't sleep your way through life.  Wake up.  Start living.  Make the most of every day in small ways like stopping by a friend's house just to catch up because it's been too long, or in big ways by taking that trip overseas you've always dreamed of, because as long as life seems it is all too short and so very precious.  Life your life with the imperativeness that you only get this one and it goes by so fast.  So, what are you going to do today?