Look well to this day....

I received the following in an email. I believe in this message and thought I would share it with you:


A friend of mine opened his wife's underwear drawer and picked up a silk paper wrapped package:

'This, - he said - isn't any ordinary package.'

He unwrapped the box and stared at both the silk paper and the box.

'She got this the first time we went to New York , 8 or 9 years ago. She has never put it on , was saving it for a special occasion.

Well, I guess this is it.

He got near the bed and placed the gift box next to the other clothing he was taking to the funeral house, his wife had just died.

He turned to me and said: 'Never save something for a special occasion.

Every day in your life is a special occasion'.

I still think those words changed my life.

Now I read more and clean less.
I sit on the porch without worrying about anything.
I spend more time with my family, and less at work.

I understood that life should be a source of experience to be lived up to, not survived through.

I no longer keep anything.

I use crystal glasses every day...

I'll wear new clothes to go to the supermarket, if I feel like it.
I don't save my special perfume for special occasions, I use it whenever I want to.

T he words 'Someday....' and ' One Day...' are fading away from my dictionary. If it's worth seeing, listening or doing, I want to see, listen or do it now....

I don't know what my friend's wife would have done if she knew she wouldn't be there the next morning, this nobody can tell..

I think she might have called her relatives and closest friends. She might call old friends to make peace over past quarrels.
I'd like to think she would go out for Chinese, her favorite
food.
It's these small things that I would regret not doing, if I knew my time had come..
 
Each day, each hour, each minute, is special.
 
Live for today, for tomorrow is promised to no-one..
 
I went to camp for 7 years. Almost every morning the camp director read Kalidasa's "Salutation to the Dawn" at flag raising. At the time it never meant much to me. I was too anxious to rush to breakfast and get on with my day. However, I revisited the poem several years ago and realized how great an impact that brief poem had on my life, because it IS the way I chose to live. The message I shared and this poem are almost the same. I love Kalidasa's words:

Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life,
In its brief course
Lie all the verities and realities of your existence:

The bliss of growth,
The glory of action,
The splendor of beauty,
For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow only a vision,
But today well lived makes every yesterday
a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look well, therefore, to this day!
Such is the salutation of the dawn.

So, dear friends, look well to this day!