The value of life

We usually only talk about life and how precious it is after we hear something terrible or life altering that happened; an illness or someone who passed away too young, it is then that we take the time to reflect and think about our own lives and the true value of it.

Time is so precious, it is most often taken for granted and it is the most important thing we don't even own. We buy material items because it makes us feel important, it makes us look pretty and it makes us comfortable. Yes people, even 6 inch high heeled shoes make us "comfortable".

We fill our lives with things, items, objects. The latest purse, the hottest pair of shoes and the skinniest of skinniest pair of jeans. I am the first to admit that retail therapy feels damn good. I can just lose myself in a shoe store or a sale rack, and who the hell doesn't love to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon at Homesense??

Life is super stressful and we get mixed up in all the chaos. We go go go and we can't wait for the day to end, only to begin the same routine the next morning. Some of us work full time and have kids in activities, sports and of course homework; lots of it. We maybe take a couple of weeks a year vacationing with the family, spend some hours on the weekends visiting family and friends and then we have to clean the house, make the meals and do grocery shopping in between. Kids have to be showered, bedtime snacks, stories, and sleep time negotiations. I swear, my kids could negotiate with the government if they had a chance. (Who am I kidding, nobody can negotiate with the Canadian government).

My point is that we continue this fast paced cycle and it's not even because we want to, its because we think we have to. We maintain a life we consider to be the right one for our kids. We want to make our children's lives as fun filled, material filled and device filled as we possible can. Why? because they ask us. why do we do it? because we just do. Then something terrible happens, we hear tragic news about a loved one, or something that happened to someone else's child and we pause. We stop in our tracks. We cry and we ache for those parents. We ache for the families and we promise ourselves to never miss an opportunity to hug our kids and tell our parents we love them.
We then begin to talk about how precious life is. How we need to slow down and enjoy our children, because age 7 will never come around again, once they turn 8. We look at pictures of them when they were babies and ask ourselves how the time just went by so quickly. We pray that they will always be safe, happy and healthy. We realize then, how we should enjoy every day as much as we possibly can.

Life is precious and time should be treasured. We are gifts on this earth, we have purpose and meaning. We can treat it the same way we handle babies, puppies and children; with a smile, a soft embrace and protect it from all things evil.  Handle it with care, smile at it everyday, laugh when you can make it laugh and always show love! For it is only then, we will truly be able to appreciate the value of life.

That's  my peace today