Are you living your life or do you just exist? Do you savor every day? Relish every breath? Challenge yourself to be and to do something new every day?
Life is as we all know or maybe need to be reminded, a “gift from God.” If that is the case why do we go about wasting it?

We get caught up in the mediocre routines of going to work, paying bills, eating the same dishes, watching the same television shows and reading the same books. If you are a parent you live vicariously thru your children somehow trying to make “amends” for the transgressions of your own childhood. Why? Why? Why do we like the little box we have by our own actions painted ourselves into? We are immovable objects resisting anything different and out of our realm of experience and comfort. Is that really living? To me it is a very wasteful existence.

“Wanna, coulda, shoulda…. “Is what we tell ourselves and each other about the lack of taking advantage of life’s bounties? The only martyrs are in heaven not on Earth. There is a time in life when you should and must go against the norms of your existence and experience the new and unfamiliar. In doing so we stimulate our minds, our hearts, and our souls. Doesn’t God want us to be more than what we are? To experience all that He created for us?
Is it because some of us has never faced the prospect of death? Without the crucial motivation of facing our own mortality, do we just settle for the things as they are?

My closest friends, family, and others who form my innermost circle lovingly refer to me as being “crazy”. My associates and acquaintances also refer to me as “crazy”. The difference between the two groups is that the first group knows and understands I have faced and stared death in its face. The latter does not know, nor understand that to truly appreciate life you must need to have a supreme moment.

The ability to stare death in its face and fight to win was my moment. The ability to accept the possibility of defeat and accept that fact with grace and dignity, changes you. It changes your views and thinking, about yourself and how your view on the world. There is a freedom to facing your own mortality that frees you from the deceptive, pretentious, and artificiality which we create every day in our interpersonal relationships.

In 1999, I was diagnosed with a form of brain cancer that fortunately when caught early enough can be treated. During the following year of radiation, chemical invasion, (at that time) experimental therapies, and dealing with the pressures being “pseudo-homeless” I learned how to change my patterns in life and get off of the merry-go-round of life. I have always been referred to as being “crazy” well, that experience allowed me to become even “crazier.” I developed an inner core of steel. I had to be strong for myself. Weakness was not an option, as well as surgery. The woman I was in a relationship with at that time broke up with me the day I told her. My immediate family basically treated the news I told them as a non-issue. The only people who “gave a damn” and “had my back” were 2,000 miles away my “team”(they are and always will be my brothers, sisters, and adopted mother) of whom I am eternally grateful and blessed to have in my life. I was strong for them and for myself, enduring all that I met during that year and a half until my team of doctors advised me that I was in remission. During that time, speaking with the “team” who advocated surgery time after time I was resistant. I was resistant because my mind is my greatest asset, the prospect of losing or additionally damaging a vital part of me disturbed me greatly. My mind is like an athletes’ body, I have always trained it. I can out-think almost anyone. I think quickly on many levels at once. I can analyze and comprehend a lot of information on many topics quickly. I did not want to lose that; the essence of who I am.

I shared a very personal and painful experience to explain how I got thrown off the “merry-go-round” of life that we all create for ourselves. I had to change the pattern of my existence. Many of us need to change the same pattern. What will be your ultimate moment? Determine that the moment is today.

There is a whole world to explore a world of God’s creation. He charged us to continually be on a journey of growth. When I hear people say, “I can’t….” or “There’s no good person for me…” it angers me because of the fact  we have taught ourselves to believe that. By saying you cannot achieve or do something comes from the inner fear in your heart, the lack of confidence in yourself. Saying there is not a life partner for you comes from the lack of self-analysis and a realistic determination of likes and dislikes in a life partner.

Create for yourself an incubator to change yourself. Sit seriously with yourself and have an honest inner conversation with yourself. Ask yourself, “What do I want to be?, Where do I want to be?, Who do I want to be with?” go beyond the superficial and material trappings of the world and drill to the most basic of elements that answer those questions. You will be surprised by the answers you give to yourself. Write all of what you discover down. Develop a plan. Execute the plan. The devil is  the manifestation of your innermost fears. Rid yourself of the fears (and some people in your life who stoke that fear) and bring inner peace to yourself. Break the routines of your life, the “sameness” of the people around you;, stop looking for a 3×5 index card from Heaven with instructions from God. He may have just simply whispered in your ear from a person you least expect who represents the breaking of the bonds of the merry-go-round. Simply, LIVE LIFE and STOP WISHING FOR LIFE!!!