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eXcel your eXcitement

Do you get excited by your life? Are you glad to be alive? Have you even thought about it or does it take something else to trigger a thankfulness to even be alive? Maybe watching something tragic on the news like the recent earthquake in Haiti, or hearing of a death on the road that you travel along

regularly, or someone needing a life-saving operation being told that they will have to wait even longer because the hospital they attend has further cutbacks, triggers a “glad that’s not me” type of reaction, but does it get you excited to be alive? Or maybe you just plod along and have moments in your life that you file away as special “to be remembered as special” moments.

That to me, is kind of sad. Life is for living, to the fullest of our abilities. It’s not an endurance test, nor is it just for putting up with. It’s for taking by the scruff of the neck and shaking out all the dust of complancy, all the fluff of tolerance of bad situations we find ourselves in, all the stray hairs of inaction, the crumbs of discontent that we have allowed to attach themselves to us and straightening ourselves out and getting moving, with excitement, longing, an itch and thankfulness to be alive and do something with the life we have.  And it doesn’t have to be world changing or ground breaking, it just has to be something that makes you sit up straighter, or keen to get going. It’s not confined to just one part of your life either, that type of excitement should be in all parts of your life, your relationships, worklife, social life and your private moments.

I know for years I plodded along, I did what was expected of me, oftentimes resentful of the burdens of that expectation. And many people still live that way. I’ve heard people say: “I can’t …..because it would hurt XXXX”, or “that’s not what my parents want for me and I owe them so

much ” and many other reasons for not doing what they want to do with their lives. Yes, your parents or XXXX may be hurt or disappointed but that is not your responsibility, they are in charge of their own feelings and hiding behind others wishes is no excuse. I remember my mother retelling a story of someone (an only child) who went to college to study what his parent wanted him to study, law, and when he graduated they asked him where he was going to work and were totally shocked to discover he had re-applied to college to study medicine, because it was what he wanted to do. He had given his best to his studies, graduated with honours and reckoned the years spent in college were okay to please his parents, but the rest of his life was his, to do with as he pleased and to live to the full.

If you have ever spoken to someone who has had a serious accident and nearly lost their life, listen to how they approach the life they are living now. I’ve had the great luck to speak to quite a few of these people, some are friends and others are merely acquaintances, but they all have one thing in common – a thirst for life, a gratefulness to be alive (even those left paralysed and dependent on others for their basic needs) and an utter joy at what tomorrow may bring, because they know they will deal with it. They’ve looked death in the face, decided they didn’t like it and now live life with an zeal and excitement, that type of passion that we often only see in those who have a particular

project or mission to complete. But for these people life is a gift, a second chance to be glad to be alive, and to make the very best they can out of it.

Will you have to wait until you have a near-death experience before you realise that you only get one life, you don’t get to come back a second time and make all the adjustments you’d have liked to the first time around? So live your life to the full, excited by the dawning of a new day and a new opportunity to live your best life possible.

“If you don’t think every day is a good day, just try missing one.” ~ Cavett Robert ~