Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Choosing Breathless

"Life isn't measured by the number of breaths you take,
But by the moments that take your breath away."

In 1999 my entire family traveled by car to Grand Lake, Colorado to celebrate my parents' 50th wedding anniversary. During the second day of travel, my 9-year-old nephew asked his mother, "When is our vacation going to start?"

"It already has," she replied. "This is the vacation!"

How often do we simply get through our days on our way to somewhere else? We look forward to the weekends...holidays...vacations...thinking that the big moments are the defining points in our lives. We want the momentous, memorable, important to happen so that we can mark our journey with red flags of accomplishment and wondrous times.

But life is a journey....and the journey is our life. It's sometimes easy to think that nothing is happening, that there must be something else to it all, somewhere else that we are meant to be. We forget that what we have is all we have; that in order to have moments that take our breath away we have to notice the beauty along the pathway instead of looking ahead for the magnificent view.

We all have breathless moments, signatures upon our biography that lead us to see the extraordinary in the ordinary.

*Being alone on top of Coronado Heights and seeing it in different lighting.

*A hug from someone I adore.

*Listening to music that unexplainably touches me.

*Walking down a dusty country road with twilight on my heels.

*A certain look from my husband.

*Having a bobcat, deer, raccoon come out of the brush, allowing me to view it close up.

*A gift out of the blue.

*A sincere compliment.

*Candlelit services on Christmas Eve.

*Sitting around a campfire with my family.

*Sunsets on the edge of my back yard.

*Fireworks on the Fourth of July.

*Dancing in a gazebo during a rainstorm.

*Riding a bike downhill, the wind in my hair.

*An unexpected letter from a dear friend.

*The brilliant display of Autumn.

*An "I Love You" from the heart.

It isn't how far you travel down the pathway at all, but simply what you see - and how you choose to see it - along the way.

In everyday, in some form or another, seize the moments that take your breath away and leave an indelible mark upon the tablet that is your life.

6 comments:

srp said...

Thanks for the reminder. In these troubled times we need to cling to those little things that give us peace and calm our fears. You are so right; the big things in life often leave a hollow feeling while the small joys fill our hearts.

Glad to see you back.

Mike said...

very nice list of things....but you are always good at those! :-)

Was fun to trade emails earlier this week!

keep in touch!

Martie said...

Very well said as usual, friend! You remind all of us of the small but oh so significant happenings in our lifes that should be considered blessings!

Thank you for this reminder!

Anonymous said...

this is a very good post. thank you and i hope that your weekend is restful. poet

Anonymous said...

So true. Sometimes I forget, yet most the time I also try to take in every moment of perious life and make the most of it.

Rebecca said...

Your last sentence says it all so perfectly!

I'm glad to see you writing again! Hope you'll be able to keep it up...the blogosphere is a little bit darker without you. :)