In spite of this morning's South Georgia billowing pollen storms that
are gold
plating my recovering lungs, I thought how lucky another day belongs to me.
How lucky I
am to have been so close to death and now to be able to so celebrate life.
With so many
things to complain about nowadays, it isn't easy to be in a thankfulness mode,
but for me
it is always time to think about and appreciate the many things I am grateful
for: Susan,
my sons, their wives, my grandmunchkins, all the members of my extended family,
my dear
friends. Foremost among that for which I am grateful is just having today. I
know I must
welcome each moment and live the treasure that comes with it. Like with my
angelic Susan,
I consciously fall in love with life all over again and again and again; I
caress each
minute of each day again and again and again. For me each day is a fresh,
unique,
wonderful, joyous, and rich opportunity of a lifetime to trade limitations for
limitless
inspiration. Death, for me, was probably the single-best invention of life.
It was
another brake that slowed me down further to see and hear people and things
around me
still more sharper than had my epiphany or my cancer.
You know life is such a grand adventure. You have to live it
consciously and
sincerely with passion, purpose, and resolve, or you waste it. True, it
doesn't come
easy, but you don't back away from it just because it is tough. You see
challenges as
opportunities to keep you up rather than as barriers to get you down; you stay
energized
rather than depleted; you don't slow down and moan just because the road
becomes steep or
rocky.
Like my Susan, each day is a one-of-a-kind miracle in which I feel
obligated to
bring my beauty and to give my goodness. Just to be here in this moment, to be
in this
place, to feel the energy of life, to model how good the world can be, demands
I live and
do and love and know just because I can. I'm not going to apologize for being
so
dramatic. I have become acutely aware that my time is limited and it is the
ultimate of
sins to waste it by not making the world around me sparkle, by not filling each
moment
with meaning, by not using the awesome power of purpose, by not focusing on
bringing to
life every unique possibility life offers, by not living the miracle that is
me, and by
not leaving this world a better place than I found it.
All this is the meaning of an answer I gave to a question a professor
threw at me
last Wednesday night at the end of an intense, grueling, and inspiring two
workshop on
collegiate teaching I gave at Central Michigan University to a bunch of neat,
dedicated,
and committed people. "If you could reduce all of these two days of workshop
sessions you
presented down to one question I must always ask myself," she asked, "what
would it be?"
I thought for a few seconds and answered, "Why do I get up in the
morning?" But,
I couldn't stop there. "Sure, it's critical to ask that question, but," I
continued,
"it's means nothing if you don't live the answer. And, that answer has to be
at the most
personal and deepest level of a spirituality if you are going to have the
commitment,
dedication, strength, endurance, perseverance, and resilience to be a true
teacher,
especially in this day and age."
"Spirituality?"
"No, I'm not turning my collar around," I assured her. "By
spirituality I mean
vision, intention, meaningfulness, significance, purposefulness, mindfulness,
awareness,
nowness, otherness, connectedness to some thing or someone beyond the material
academic
stuff that you see on a resume."
Make it a good day.
--Louis--
Louis Schmier http:// therandomthoughts.com
Department of History http:// therandomthoughts.edublogs.org
Valdosta State University
Valdosta, Georgia 31698 /\ /\ /\ /\
(229-333-5947) /^\\/ \/ \ /\/\__/\ \/\
/ \/ \_ \/ / \/
/\/
\ /\
//\/\/ /\
\__/__/_/\_\ \_/__\
/\"If you want to climb
mountains, /\
/ \ don't practice on mole
hills" -/
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