I AM ALIVE, AWAKE ON THIS BEAUTIFUL DAY

This saying, aphorism, motto, proverb, whatever you want to name it, says it all. “If you are awake, you are blessed. Life is a priceless gift. Appreciate every minute of it.” William Alger said that sayings are “portable wisdom.” How nice to have wisdom that is movable and transferable. This means, I presume that any wisdom we have can be moved in any direction we want to ‘direct’ it to. “Wisdom is the soul’s natural food.” That is another saying that is a fine one. The person I know who had the if you are awake wisdom on her Facebook is a Cancer survivor and just went through chemotherapy and radiation. Yet, she is a happy, dear and wonderful person and she is always posting the above sayings to her daily Facebook additions. How nice to be so pleasant, kind and happy a person, when she has gone through quite a lot in her fifty years. She is happy to awake and doing well and hopefully she will be fortunate that from now on, she will be fine and healthy. Another young woman I met today, told me she is a five year Cancer survivor and she too is an extremely, delighted to be an alive person. All of us and especially seniors now called by me, its new name in my columns, active adults, should be feeling lucky we are awake and alive. Alive and awake can be a new saying or aphorism that we can live by. Some folks die before their time and it could be from an automobile accident that was not their fault. They were hit by someone who was going the wrong way, speeding or possibly drunk. That person always survives and the other person or persons lose their lives. We feel that very unfair, unjust and sad. I knew of a doctor who retired and trying to find some things to occupy his time; he took to doing repair jobs around his home. One day, he was clearing leaves from the gutters and fell off the ladder and hit his head and was gone. In a split second, his life was ended doing something for the home and just think, if he had paid a professional to do it, he would still be alive and awake. If we get an illness, because we smoked or did other non-healthful things, then one can say we deserved it.If we go about our business and do everything right and proper, we should believe that we will be alive and awake every morning for a long period of time. Sometimes, that does not happen and we begin to wonder why, when we hear friends or family who are decent people have bad things happen to them. Someone wrote a book called When Bad Things Happen to Good People. In it, he tried to explain this to the reader. I do not think he was successful with his opinions on that subject. I always thought when I was a child of ten or eleven, that if you were good, kind, honest and nice, you would be granted a long time on this earth. I have known of some really mean spirited people who lived on past ninety-five. On the other hand, I know really fine and decent folks who surely died before their time due to an illness or a car accident. I had a good friend who passed on this year before his fifty-second birthday. We saw him on the Monday before the Thursday he passed on, which was exactly about seventy-two hours later. I told my husband a few days ago this silly thought. “If I had known this would happen, maybe I could have warned him on that Monday night to be extra careful on Thursday and perhaps it would have saved his life.” This is a truly weird thing, but when you are sad about something like that, it seems plausible. When Mom was sick in Johns Hopkins Hospital twenty-eight years ago, we were told the end was near, so we were prepared in a way for its happening. We stayed by her side every day of that week and on Friday evening, five minutes after we left to go home for a few hours, she passed on. Actually, it was sad, we were not there that minute, but almost grateful, we did not see the last moment. So while we are waking up each morning, instead of saying we wish we could be off of work today, or wish we could sleep in a few more hours or wish we did not have a doctor’s appointment or wish that we were on our vacation week; let us be grateful we are awake, know it and remember that every day is a priceless gift. Even if some days are boring, are too busy, are too rainy, are too much heat or snow out there or we find it difficult to pay our bills or anything we do not like too much; always remember that we are spending the gift we have and teach our self to splurge and have good thoughts on a happy day, because we are alive, awake and here. Think about all you have, count your blessings and remember that each day is a blessing. I said in a former article, list your blessings and happiness on a pad of paper and then you will be counting up to a high number of them. Your first one on the list will be: I am alive, I am awake. Remember that wisdom is the soul’s natural food (another saying) and you are quite a special and wise person. elita sohmer clayman