“I propose that, as of today, do not keep anything for a special occasion, because every day that you live is a special occasion. Search for knowledge, read more, sit on your front porch and admire the view without paying attention to the needs. Pass more time with your family, eat your favorite food, visit the place you love. Life is a chain of moments of enjoyment; it isn’t only survival.”
— Anonymous
Anyone lucky enough to live a long life has experienced the highest of jubilant joys and the agony of everything from disappointments, disrespect and unbearable sorrow.
It is how we choose to view each of these monumental life experiences that will define our days.
Gathering with friends last night to celebrate the wedding of a neighbor, the conversation turned to the work of the harvest. We spoke of the many people we have known over the years in our small community who have experienced farm accidents, costing the enormous price of a lost limb or the loss of life.
The mother of the groom, Linda, who I have known all my life, was asked about the time long ago when she was injured.
“I was in the fourth grade,” she said. It was chilly, so she had put on her father’s flannel shirt. It was the sleeve of that too-large shirt which was grabbed by the PTO, sending her to the intensive care unit for a very long time. She came through it all with great fortune on her side, though her parents were surely forever changed by the experience.
She laughed as she finished telling us about it, saying “So now you know what’s wrong with me!” I couldn’t help but think if it had not had such a happy ending, none of us would have been gathered there last night.
The trajectory of a life can change in the blink of an eye. No other place is it quite as apparent as in a farming community. I grew up with this awareness. We were told how someone we knew had lost a hand or an arm or walked with a significant limp after suffering a split-second chance encounter with machinery or an angry bull.
“If we don’t talk about how tragic accidents happened, we don’t learn from someone’s costly experience,” my dad would say.
I was in early grade school but can still so clearly remember the day near the silos when Dad grabbed me with such force I felt sure I was being punished.
He placed me on the open tailgate of his truck, and with a shaking voice told me the opened hood of my coat had come dangerously close to the PTO of the Farmall M.
Later that evening, the uneventful day behind us, Dad asked us all to listen to a few things he had to say. I felt chastised as he spoke of my mistake, tears stinging my eyes. He noticed my struggle to contain those tears of shame.
“I’m not saying this to punish you. It’s my job to keep each one of you safe, and we did that today. And now we’re going to celebrate with cake and ice cream!” Then I got to blow out a candle, and it wasn’t even my birthday.
The quote that opens this column has circulated for several years now, and each time I read the much longer statement, I am reminded to live each day like it could be our last.
For those of us who have our health, a whole, intact body that can easily walk anywhere we wish, each day earns a candle.
