Living or life-ing?

Living is an attitude of appreciation for every moment of every day. It is the place where priorities change, focus shifts, agendas adjust, and life and everything in life has purpose.

by Susan Torres — 

We all have our routines and follow them faithfully in our daily lives, so much so that we have become like robots. Life has become a habit and we are in drive mode. Heaven forbid something or someone should toss a wrench into this fine-tuned agenda, throwing us for a loop or causing us to lose our beat.

Even our vacations are planned, down to every last-minute detail. No time for smelling the roses, appreciating the feel of the hot water in the shower or noticing the cool breeze across our faces — we are way too busy, focusing on the plan of the day, the month and the year.

Welcome to the world of “life-ing” — a place where everything is calculated to the minute, stress to meet that agenda is the word of the day and tunnel-vision is the norm. Life-ing is a spirit unto itself, an attitude all its own. It is the mere existence of life from one day to the next. Life-ing is the dark side of living.

We all have priorities and things that need to be done. We pay bills, do laundry, work, eat, breathe, shower, sleep, wake … you name it, we do it over and over and over again, until it becomes just another day, the mundane, a chore. This is the vibration or attitude of life-ing. Life-ing is the conditioning of a lifetime of playing “follow the leader.” After all, doesn’t everyone play the moan-and-groan game of life? We play it so often and so well that it becomes real. Life-ing becomes our way of living and the game of life becomes a rote chore.

We hear all the time, “life is meant to be lived” and we nod our heads in agreement. But in truth, it has been so long since we truly lived and enjoyed life that we do not even recognize what that means anymore. It is like a dream, something we remember vaguely, but that is somehow just out of reach.

Maybe, if we are lucky, the day will come — possibly with a milestone birthday or an illness, the birth of a grandchild or death of a loved one — when the thought first appears … have I lived more days than I have left?

Your mind starts racing as you begin looking back over your life, searching for something, some justification for your past choices. At that moment, you look up at the sky and suddenly it never looked so beautiful. The air never smelled so sweet. And for that one frozen moment in time, you realize that every second of every day has meaning, and you know your life will never be the same.

Welcome to the world of living.

Living is an attitude of appreciation for every moment of every day. It is the place where priorities change, focus shifts, agendas adjust, and life and everything in life has purpose. Where even the mundane takes on new meaning and appreciation, and nothing seems as bad as it did before. Where every sunrise and sunset takes your breath away and you recognize the beauty in everything. It is a place where family and friends come first and helping others is the way of life.

Living is the spirit of love and the honoring of life itself. So, are you living or life-ing? Now that is the question.

Susan Torres is an ordained minister, certified spiritual counselor, Reiki master/teacher and intuitive angel reader. 602-548-1313.

Reprinted from AzNetNews, Volume 25, Number 4, August/September 2006.