You have heard this many times before:
Life is short.
Now stop and really think about those words, let me add to it a bit:
YOUR life is short.
That kind of gives it a whole new perspective and a bit of reality doesn’t it?!
I personally never would have believed that my twenty-five year class reunion would have been last fall. I also never would have imagined that my youngest son would be a sophomore in high school already and that my life just may be half over. I really am not certain where or when time passed by but one day, not that long ago, I awoke only to realized it was passing by and I had not accomplished even close to what I had wanted to with my life, more importantly, I wasn’t happy. It was then that I had the awakening that I was not going to sit back and let the second half of my life go by without doing the things that I wanted to do and create happiness in my life. Go back and read that last sentence….create happiness in my life. Remember WE are responsible for creating our own happiness.
The first half of my life was about raising my children and making sacrifices, it wasn’t about me at all…I didn’t even purchase my first purse until this last year. I am completely serious here. I had purses given to me as gifts but I had never even went out and bought myself my own purse, and quite honestly, it wasn’t easy. I had walked by the purse section of Macy’s for years and I had made purchases for my daughters but I could never bring myself to buy something like that for my own self. Last year I walked past a purse at Macy’s that wowed me, it was a Dooney and Burke. I looked at the tag and couldn’t justify it, I walked away. Moments later I walked back and asked for assistance just to “look” at the purse. It was beautiful leather, camel in color. I held the purse and my hands began to shake. The woman helping me asked me if everything was ok and I said, “I have never bought my own purse before, isn’t that crazy!” “What? You have NEVER bought a purse?” “No, and dammit I want the matching wallet, too!” The saleswoman was so astonished that I had never bought a purse for myself before that she gave me a sales price on the Dooney that wasn’t on sale and she smiled at me and told me to enjoy my purse. Her kindness was sincerely appreciated and my gratitude was heartfelt. I wasn’t used to doing something so special, so personal for me. My thought process came from years of sacrificing for my family. It has only been in the last few years that I have started to do for me. I am not saying to go out and drop $300 on a purse and matching wallet because time is passing you by, what I am saying is it is ok to think of yourself every now and again. It is ok to do things for your own self. Giving and doing for others is and should be a way of life but if you are not taking care of or meeting your own needs then you are not going to be able to give 100% to others, I wish I would have learned this long ago.
Be kind to yourself and do for you just as you would do for someone else because, as I said above, life is short and you deserve to enjoy it.
~The Possibilitarian’s Light
The Possibilitarian's Light 