"Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed."--Wayne Dyer

There is no such thing as an ordinary or insignificant day. Life is precious, and every day is special. Most of us are vaguely aware of this important fact, but few of us live in accordance with that knowledge. Instead, we treat most of our days as if they were stepping stones to the much better times that most of us think must be just a little farther down life's pathway. Only as we get closer and closer to the end of our lives do we realize just how precious and special each and every day is.

Every day is the first day of the rest of our life, and none of us knows just how long "the rest of our life" is. It shouldn't matter whether we think we have only days or months left to live, or whether we believe we have many years of life still ahead of us. Each and every day should be considered special. But, it does matter to most of us how much longer we think we will live. Those who believe they have many more years to live usually live their individual days differently than people with a terminal illness. If we think we are going to live a long time, we see no urgency in getting the most out of each individual day. We treat our individual days as "practice" or rehearsal days that can be used to prepare for the real living that will come later on.

One of the reasons that so many of us put off living each day to the fullest is the belief that we have too many problems to be totally happy today. We think we will wait until most of our problems go away to really start celebrating life. We vow that when we reach the point where most everything is going smoothly, then we will begin to focus on each and every day as special. This is one of the biggest mistakes that any of us can make, because almost none of us will ever reach that point where everything is going smoothly and we are without problems. Life just does not work that way. Most of us will have problems almost every day of our lives until the day we die. The only way that we are going to find happiness is to learn to be happy and live with our problems at the same time.

I believe that we should live every day with the same exuberance that we would live it if it were one of our last days. If we do so, we will have a lot more fully lived days in our memory banks when the time comes for us to depart this earth than we would have otherwise had. Think about it.

Copyright 2007 Allen W. Smith

Mind is the master power

that molds and makes,

and we are mind, and evermore we take

the tool of thought,

and shaping what we will,

bring forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills.

We think in secret, and it comes to pass--

our world is but our looking glass.

-James Allen, As You Think