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Today's
quotation:
Life
is not intended to be simply a round of work, no matter how
interesting and important that work may be. A moment's
pause
to watch the glory of a sunrise or a sunset is soul
satisfying,
while a bird's song will set the steps to music all day
long.
Laura Ingalls Wilder
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Today's
Meditation:
I'm always
surprised at the number of people who can be in the
presence of a marvelous sunset or an amazing rainbow or
something else of incredible beauty, and not want to stop
even for a moment to look at it, to soak in the
sight. "That's nice," they may say, or
even "That's beautiful," but they still keep on
doing what they were doing without even considering the
"moment's pause" that Laura mentions. When
I see something like that, I always have to pause, for I
know that those few moments that I spend focused on that
one beautiful thing are among the richest moments of my
life.
Our
lives are filled with moments that we can treasure, but we
very often don't see them because we're so "caught
up" in what we're doing. Sometimes, of course,
it's necessary to be caught up-- if I have ten hours of
work to do and the deadline is tomorrow at noon, then
there's a good chance that I'll miss this evening's
sunset. But those times are rather rare, unless we
build them into our lives regularly. My work is
important to me, but my life is even more important, and I
want to enrich my life as much as I can through wonder and
appreciation.
When
I go to a new place, I love looking at the pictures they
have on the walls-- some of them are almost like
galleries. One hospital that I know has so many
beautiful pictures that I could never see them in one
visit-- and I was only there two or three times. I
could have just sat down in the waiting room and waited
for my name to be called, but with those beautiful
pictures calling, I didn't want to miss out on some very
pleasant moments that I spent looking at them.
These
pauses really must be a part of our lives if we're to
reach the end of our days and be able to say, "I got
the most out of my life" instead of "I rushed
through my life and missed many very special moments
because I didn't have a moment to spare." The
truth is that we always have a moment or three to spare--
but we're not always willing to take them because
they might interrupt something else. And we miss out
on a lot when we let that happen over and over again.
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