breath by breath

I have been trying a lot lately to appreciate the small things in life that normally slip by without ever being thought of because we are to busy in our everyday lives to notice. For example lately here in Houghton we have been receiving some very abnormal "fall-like" winter weather, and though this is depressing for some, I have been trying each day to breathe in same fresh air and say to myself its good to be alive, and good to take life breath by breath. I have noticed lately the fast pace that everyone around me moves at, and felt the temptation myself to join them and there are many days that I do. But on a day like today when the sun is shining down on me, the sky pierces through the clouds for a time, I just like to slow down, and appreciate the beauty around me.

I have noticed that there is a big push at college and probably at every step of life to always look to the future, and to wonder what we will do next. "What are you doing after college?" "What Grad schools are you looking at?" or even "What are you doing this weekend?" We are always living in the next day or week or month. Living from weekend to weekend, vacation to vacation, and not taking the time to realize the precious moments to be had each day. If you think about it, if we keep living in the future we will continually miss the moments that we have looked foreword to, and we will miss most of our own lives. If our lives are measured by the weekends that we have, the vacations that we take, or the major decisions that we make, the most of our life will seem to be just filler. What a disappointing thought this is.

I encourage you, as I would hope that you would encourage me, to take life one day at a time, realizing that there is something special to be had and learned in each day, for as a wise man once said "do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." I realize that this is nothing profound to you, or new, but when you really think about how much time is spent thinking about the future and not realizing how special the time that we have been given really is, its sad that we cant find happiness where we are. Please for your own sake, don't let a day go by without realizing how special it truly is.