Most of us live our life in little boxes.
These boxes have numbers on them and they tell us where we are. We live and die by the stuff within these boxes; our success or failure determined there, our victories and defeats measured there, our progress and regression defined there. The boxes tell us if we’re getting it right or not.
This morning, as I always do, I woke up and found the box called Today. It was surrounded by lots of other boxes filled with appointments and meetings and deadlines, all competing for my attention; reminding me of what I’d messed up and threatening me with mountains of tasks ahead.
But all those other boxes are a mirage. They are illusions. They’re a loud, swirling storm of the gone and the not yet arrived. As noisy and imposing as they are, those other boxes don’t exist—and so I don’t really exist there either.
No matter how much I’d like to I can’t reach back into the box called Yesterday and alter or fix or repeat it, and I can’t strain ahead to touch Tomorrow’s box and all I’m looking forward to or worried about there.
I get this box.
This box is life. It is the sum total of the time I have here. This box is the tiny, sacred sliver of space I get to try and live well.
I imagine if my doctor told me today that I had one day left to live, it would matter greatly to me. I imagine I would live differently with such a diagnosis.
I would hope that all the unimportant things would instantly fall away, that all that was meaningful would rise to the foreground of my mind and I would grab hold of it all fiercely.
If this was the last day I had left here, I’d probably treasure it all; every breeze and scent, every color and sound. I would let it all seep into the deepest recesses of my heart and be grateful.
I’d probably see the people around me in a way I’d never seen them before.
I hope that I would hold them tightly and say everything to them, and that every fake and petty part of me would burn way in the blazing light of urgency; that I’d be more real with them and present to them than I’d ever been before.
And since I have only this day to live, since this box really is the only one I have—I’d like to spend it this way: with gratitude and joy and reverence.
Friend, don’t let the noise of the many boxes overwhelm you. When they try to pull you away to former regret and to future fear, resist them. They are ghosts. Do not be fooled into trying to live within those boxes because there is no life there to be lived. Fight to stay in this box.
Because this box, the one where you have breath and a heartbeat: This is the only one you have left to live.
Dance in it.
Rest in it.
Cherish it.
Live it.
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