Hello my fellow Wax Porhetoric folks,
It is once again time to reflect upon love, life, and death. Some of us are fortunate to find love in various ways in life. Some sadly hardly find it. Some live life to the fullest while others get caught up in the rat race and let life slip by. Suddenly, when death arrives, we may be left pondering it all. Pondering how we’ve lived our own life and pondering how we’ve affected others. Then again I suppose there are some out there that really don’t care…but I’m guessing those people aren’t reading this post.
So why another post on love, life, and death? What kind of life experience has the ponderous juices flowing again? It’s the sickness of a young kitten. Sparky, my 7 month old Burmese (she’s pretty cool…she has her own blog at www.SparkyTheCat.com) has fallen ill. The vet has been baffled by her sickness (diarrhea, lethargic, dehydrated, no appetite…sad all around) and thus she’s been taken to a specialist. What was once thought to be her colon turning in on itself (that would certainly cause internal problems…yikes) is now feared to be something worse…much worse.
Needless to say, this all came as a giant kick in the gut as Sparky and I have become rather close. Anyone that has seen us together has seen the bond that has formed. Always waiting for me at the door when I get home, constantly on my lap (well, when we’re not playing fetch together), sitting calmly on my shoulder as we go to the pet store or to the vet…it’s a strong bond as she comes looking for me no matter where I am in the house. Hearing that she could be terminally ill (there is a chance it’s a really bad bacterial infection…cross your fingers) sent me back to pondering life and what I’m doing with it. As I lay on the couch with Sparky on my chest post-surgery, I look at her and feel the bond we share. And I wonder how something so great can have the threat of being torn away. Something all too familiar…such as my mother’s passing less than a year ago. Another instance of a bond so strong that anybody in the same room could see that we could tell story after story with non-verbal cues and sparse phrases.
I sit here typing away as Sparky sleeps on my lap. Another reminder that life can be far too short. The vet bills…they racked up quite quickly. Looking down at precious life that is curled up on my lap, I don’t care about those bills. I care about her life. I care about the life I am living. I care about how I am affecting people around me. I care about living life with my loved ones to the fullest.
All these things I care about and I know it’s not the easiest path to follow. It’s fairly unrealistic in today’s fast-paced materialistic me-centric society to stop worrying about paying bill after bill (especially in this recession when many people are trying to care for their families or protect their wealth) and simply say “I want to live life”.
Sad…but true.
However, I want to live life. And I know there are others out there that want the same thing. There are people who have had near-death experiences and are rediscovering life and looking deep into who they are and who they want to be. An admirable way to live…to learn from mistakes, to learn from being on the edge, to learn from any situation and to grow from it.
I sit here, bills piling up, wanting to live life. We need to try to remember to do this. We need to shed the daily “tasks” and enjoy the daily discoveries. It’s tough…I know. It will be a concerted effort for a while until it becomes second nature. It’s easier when you find similar people with similar views on living life to the fullest. Let us find them, embrace them, embrace life.
