|
 |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
Pave Paradise? by Guy Spiro “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone?” I’ve quoted Joni Mitchell before in this column, but lately this line from Yellow Taxi has been ringing more true than ever. Look at health, for example. When we are healthy, we really tend to have very little idea how good we feel. I have had the flu these past three weeks. The bad one. The one that starts out with nausea and vomiting and segues right into the high fever with aching joints. When the fever has had enough of you, the coughing starts. The all night long keeping the whole house awake coughing that hurts your head and chest and stomach muscles. I’m finally near the end of the ordeal and the coughing is now of the clearing it out kind. It still hurts, but at least something comes out and I know I’m finally on the mend. It was the genuine gratitude I felt when I first started to be able to breath through both nostrils that gave me the idea for this piece. As my strength returns and I start to feel more normal, I’ve realized how I took my regular healthy state for granted. This brought me to think about all the other good things in life that we take for granted. Look around at all of the people, things and circumstances that bring joy and comfort to you, that you would really be bereft without. When was the last time you took a moment to feel and perhaps express gratitude for them? I have never been big on New Year’s Resolutions. One reason is that they are so rarely kept, which is a setup for guilt and shame. Another is that they often tend to point out what we do not have, are not doing right, and have not accomplished. Don’t get me wrong, we all can and should make improvements in our lives. But if we focus on the negative and ignore the positive, we end up with more of the former and less of the latter. We all need to cultivate more of an attitude of gratitude. It all comes down to the fact that our reality is in our hands. Will we bring a little more heaven to earth or will we “pave paradise and put up a parking lot”? |
|||||||||||||||||||||
