Life is precious! Unfortunately many don’t understand that until they have been touched either personally or by someone close to them with a chronic or life-threatening illness. We never imagine in our wildest dreams that life was to include suffering; that is unless you’re a Buddhist. So why don’t we fight harder for our lives? Why don’t we try and develop as many resources as possible to create peace in our mind, body, and spirit? It’s a difficult question to ask and if you live in a Western industrialized culture the answer is easy, we think the Universe owes us a good life. Our culture promotes a narrow focus that leads to entitlement and misguided assumptions.
This post isn’t about shaming anyone into doing anything different. Actually, it’s about recognizing the sanctity of life. The catalyst for these remarks is the crash of an Air France jet going from Brazil to France. The plane went down 400 miles north of a Brazilian island. The reports state that they experienced bad storms resulting in the crash. Today they are still looking for signs of the plane, but we need pay respects to the 228 people on board the flight. They had no choices about when their life would end, how it would end nor did they have any possible way to reverse any of the decisions they had made before getting on that plane.
As long as you continue to wake-up each day you have a choice to make decisions about your life. Maybe it’s like Tim McGraw’s song “Live like you were dying”, or maybe it’s just about creating a gentler more peaceful you. It doesn’t matter what changes you make or if you make any changes at all as long as you’re conscious of the life you lead daily. There are no do-overs. There is no room for living a life full of regrets. Those people boarding that plane didn’t know they would die. They didn’t know they wouldn’t ever see their families again. They did have time to experience terror, but that couldn’t change the outcome.
Please take a moment during your day and offer a prayer and a moment of silence to honor the 228 lives lost in the crash. Then give yourself the gift, the honor, and the strength that comes with leading a conscious life by getting in your body, experiencing your emotions and understand that you’re a spiritual being having a human experience.
Pilgrim Pathway/Surviving Strong 