Adi and I arose to do our early morning Sadhana around 4:45 am. For those of you unfamiliar, Sadhana is a daily spiritual practice that aligns with our highest potential (read more here). We rise each morning to connect to our Highest Self to set the course for our day. After Sadhana, Adi asked me if I wanted to go for a walk. It was 6:15 am in Texas and the heat of the day hadn’t quite set in—the perfect time for a walk.
Adi and I often talk about how important it is to live life like we are on vacation every day. On our walks we love to daydream about living abroad and drinking in the culture of a foreign city, so when we are home, we make it a point to embrace each day as if we were in a foreign country exploring a new land. We say, “If we can’t do this in our own city in this very moment what makes us think we could do it in another more ‘romantic’ city in a future time.”
It makes me think how important it is to live in the moment. So often we are projecting our happiness into another time or place thinking that that time and place will be better and then we will be happy. The truth is, we won’t be. There will be some other distraction or concern that will rob us of our happiness in the future.
With this in mind, why not just be happy now? Why not choose to find the beauty in each moment as it unfolds before our eyes. If only we could keep the curiosity and enchantment of a young child that is witnessing for the first time the essence of a flower or a tree. Imagine how our energy would change. Imagine how our heart would expand. I did this on our walk today and it fundamentally changed my perspective.
The potential for happiness stands before our eyes every day. Each new sunrise affords us the possibility of bliss and since we really don’t know how many sunrises we have left we may all consider cherishing the ones that are afforded us. God has given us a gift that we oftentimes take for granted.
I read once, “Keep your mind on death each moment of the day and by doing so you will truly live.” This resonated with me. By acknowledging and having a relationship with death we can move to a space of knowing that death is inevitable. This knowing can then become the catalyst for truly living in this moment. If we knew with absolute certainty our time of death, we would live our life with the kind of gusto that books are written, and movies produced. Well, I have news for you, Darling Reader—we will die. This is inevitable. The question then becomes: Will we truly live?
So, when Adi asked me to go for a walk through the park this morning, I realized it would have been very easy to say no. It would have been simpler to find some other task that I needed to accomplish instead—that is until I considered my own death. One day I wouldn’t be able to take this walk. One day there would be no more walks. I shifted my lens from death and instead, I considered living. One day I will go for a walk, I thought silently. Today was that day.