We live each day as if our life is about to start tomorrow. Today it’s only the rehearsal. Today, we experiment with negative emotions, toxic thoughts and harmful behaviours.
Tomorrow, the real life will start. In the real life, we feel happiness and meaningfulness, we will observe our thoughts without identifying ourselves with them and we will have a healthy life.
Tomorrow never comes. All we have is today, when we feel trapped in something like a mouse wheel, where we have no energy or willingness to get away from. Until something tragic happens. Something that shakes up our emotions and thoughts and forces us to contemplate the face of death from few inches distance.
We feel small and helpless in face of destiny, like a newborn baby in the arms of the midwife. A tiny bit of regret creeps into our hearts.
Why didn’t I live intensely up until today?
Why did I keep procrastinating the day when I laugh and love wholeheartedly, when I accept myself as I am, and when I would do what represents me the most?
Why?
The tragedy comes unexpectedly today and there may not be tomorrow. Is it Life or Death who is going to win by the end of the day?
In such a day, we have the opportunity to reinvent how to live. When contemplating upon death, I chose to breathe from the very core of myself. I chose to search for the strength to love and hope.
One ordinary afternoon, my phone rang and the friendly voice at the other end announced, in a hesitating tone, that my father and a close friend had a car accident. “They are in the ambulance. The doors to the ambulance closed before I had the have a chance to see your dad, I don’t know how he is. I did see your friend. She looked quite pale.”
In that moment, I instinctively returned to the core of myself, which is FAITH. As the pain in the heart was growing stronger, faith became a necessity, like the air that I was breathing.
Faith, the belief that we come from the same source and we have a deep, yet unexplored, connection with this source, was like an anchor in the sea of uncertainty.
After faith, human connection turned out to be the second pillar of stability. Talking with people who cared and praying together were immediate responses to the bad news.
In the following days, while struggling to accept that the car accident happened and choking in emotional pain, I had a moment of illumination when I felt gratitude about the goodness in my life. I started counting three things I felt blessed for the day. The blessings were small things, like being embraced by my child or feeling the sun rays on my cheeks. Small experiences of life, with a tremendous healing effect on my suffering.
My father survived the car accident. Our friend didn’t.
They say that time heals. Tomorrow I will accept that the tragic accident happened. Today, I thank for having my father alive. Also, I cherish the memory of our friend and feel grateful for having met her, a force of life and embodiment of joy.
Today is time to love, laugh and be kind with whoever crosses my path.