Tears are streaming down her little face, she is furious and full of regret. She kicks and screams and the tears keep rolling.
- What is the matter honey? I ask my daughter.
She looks at me bewildered, like I should know, like I should be automatically in tune with her current plight. She looks at me with total seriousness and not a little blame and she says:
- I lost a whole day! Now it is to late, it is gone, I can never do what I wanted to do today, because the day is gone.
I try to suppress the smirk and I try to empathise with her utter seriousness. I avoid the platitudes that wants to come out of my mouth and I wonder at my own callousness, how many days have I lost, squandered, just let float by without noticing or lamenting. How many months? How many years?
Somewhere inside of me I can feel the pain, I need to feel this, I need to value my life so highly that even a single day, a single hour lost in unawareness could bring grief to my heart.
It all comes down to the old “Carpe Diem” and so I need to stop writing this and go out into the sunshine, hug a friend, kiss someone deeply, fall in love, dance a slow dance, speak my truth, move my body, make love, gaze at clouds, skip, write a book, read a book, whistle, walk in the woods, laugh until my belly hurts, enjoy a good meal and whatever else it is that I am putting off until tomorrow.
I suggest you do it to. Don’t save your bucket list for when you get cancer, live your life today!
