Life in general can be daunting. The amount of stress we all hold nowadays as we make our way through work, school, relationships and daily obligations is astronomical. It’s not very often that we take the time to sit back and reflect on the things or people that are around us. Generally the only time that we reflect on something specifically is when we need to make a major life decision about it since we are so busy balancing multiple tasks at once. However, in that brief moment that you can kick back and reflect upon things you’ll find that Carl Sagan summed things up the best when he said:
Many of us go through our days never once pausing to ponder that we are just one minute piece of the giant puzzle around us that is the universe. We also spend our days so focused on our “to do” lists that often we are blind to the things that are passing us by. How fortunate we are just to have woken up to begin another day, the beauty of the day around us we run errands, or even those that mean so much to us in our lives are not something we should keep letting pass us by. There will be that day when we no longer get to enjoy these things, so stop taking them for granted.
It’s time to stop taking those who are close to us for granted. You might be the model husband or wife who keeps a roof over the family’s head or keeps home and everyone in it in order. Does that mean that you aren’t taking those you love for granted? Do they know how much you care for them based upon your interactions with them? I’m not talking about how often you tell them you love them, but more whether or not they truly feel that you love them. Love can be a very powerful force of nature and even one that is sometimes completely unexplainable. It’s not just a word or a mild feeling. True love, at least in my book, is something that connects people together in a strong bond unbreakable by whatever they might face together.
Cue the eye rolling from my cynical readers. I used to agree with you that love was bologna and just something made up in the fantasies of young gals. I only changed my mind once I had the opportunity to feel what it feels like. The passion that lies behind love is undeniably stronger than the lust most of us believe is passion. You can feel it in each other’s touch, you can see it in each other’s eyes, hear it in the way someone speaks to you with such sincerity and tenderness as well as passionately experience romance in a way that you’ve not found with others.
Each of us is just a small cog in life, but being in the presence of someone that you love and that truly loves you back makes everything surrounding you seem bearable despite the craziness that surrounds us in the world. Stop and take a moment to ponder if the one you love really feels your love. Is it in your touch, your eyes, the way you speak to them and the passion they feel coming from you. If not, then maybe they don’t fully know the way you feel or worse they may believe you’ve fallen out of love with them.
Take the time to slow down in life to enjoy what is around you before you lose it. Sagan got it right that, “the vastness is only bearable through love,” so don’t let love slip through your fingers and find yourself floundering through life with one of the biggest regrets. Waking up one day and knowing that love passed you by will eat away at you each time you kick back and wish you found yourself on a boat with your special someone off the coast of the Marquesas islands truly enjoying all that life has to offer.