Look To This Day

Look to this day:
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course
Lie all the verities and realities of your existence.
The bliss of growth,
The glory of action,
The splendour of achievement
Are but experiences of time.

For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow is only a vision;
And today well-lived, makes
Yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well therefore to this day;
Such is the salutation to the ever-new dawn!
author: Kalidasa

It has come to my attention today that I'm allowing the days to pass me by. I've good intentions for the rest of my life and yet I sit here allowing the moments to tick on without any real participation from me. Life continues on whether we sit idly by watching it from a distance or live it to its fullest. We can say there are not enough hours in the day but, in truth, most of us go about the day with no plan of action and then realize the day is gone without much having been really lived...we just existed through the moments. If we scheduled each day of our personal lives as we might those of our professional, how much more living could be crammed into the day?
What shall I do with this new day? What can I accomplish today, regardless of how small, to take me one step closer to the where and who I want to be even 10 years from now? How aware would we then become of each wasted moment?
Too often we waste time on our expectations of others....we wait for them to fulfill that which is missing in our day, our lives...a phone call that never comes; a visit which never takes place; an invitation never extended; a hope doomed to disappointment. In the end, you find you're still in the same place you were before, never moving forward because you're waiting on someone else to do for you what you should be doing for yourself....bringing life to your existence. It is not necessarily our intention to get sidetracked from life, but we do at times and we do it to ourselves. We have many interests, yet how many do we actively pursue? We think about them in the still of the night and reprimand ourselves for not having taken advantage of the day given us. I think most of the time it's because we're so caught up in living the responsibilities demanded of us that we lose touch with who we are and those things which would bring fulfillment to all aspects of our being. It's in the quiet moments....which seem so few....that we are relaxed enough to contemplate our present and our future. I personally am so accustomed to routine that when moments do present themselves the things I'd like to do escape my thoughts. A friend suggested I carry a notebook around with me and I'm beginning to appreciate that idea more and more for in the moments of the day thoughts do come to me of things I want to do, people I want to see, etc. and then when I'm idle those thoughts have been lost in the hectic pace of the day not to be recalled until laying down to sleep at night.
It's easy to give advice. lol Gosh, that is so true! It's in taking one's own advice that the communication is lost in translation. I know that life is what WE make of it; that in living life to its fullest immeasurable opportunities are opened unto us.......so why am I still waiting on someone else to do it for me? At least that's what I feel like I'm doing though I'd deny it vehemently. So, taking control of my life.......seizing the day......sounds like a good thing to do. I know what the work day demands from me though it can vary. Outside of that, the children are of an age where they can schedule around me instead of vice versa and there aren't many commitments demanding my attention so scheduling things for myself shouldn't be too difficult. Scheduling every moment of my day is an odd concept for I've always scheduled my life around others. I've known that it was time for me to move forward but didn't realize that I was holding myself in place by continuing to live in that familiar frame of mind and continuing to make myself available to others 24/7 out of habit and even creating new connections and doing the same with them. So, consciously scheduling my time each day will require some thought. Sitting here thinking about it, I realize how much time I actually spend on this computer. Oops!!