SLOW DOWN AND ENJOY YOUR LIFE

In today’s world we rush around so much, but the Angels tell me that in doing so, we often forget what life is really about.

Life is not just about work, hurrying and deadlines. We need to stop for a moment, take a deep breath and actually feel the air going into our lungs. We need to stop for a moment and see the beauty in people around us and allow the goodness of people to penetrate our lives. We need time to sit down and have relaxed conversation with family and friends, with people who we may not know well and sometimes with complete strangers. We need to take the time to realise how lucky we are to be alive.

We need to take the time to become more human again, to try and have a little more compassion for ourselves and for everything around us, to reconnect with our feelings.

If you are working too hard and always rushing around, you are missing out on many of the precious moments of life that are literally priceless.

Many people have become very materialistic.  Many of us have more than we need, and yet we strive to have even more. We often forget that material things cannot bring full happiness. There is nothing wrong with money and wealth, but use it wisely. Use it to fulfil yourself, and to make life easier for family members and others who may be in need.

My experience of this wisdom in action:

I was in hospital for tests recently and was chatting with the nurse who was treating me. I asked her about her family. She told me that she had grown up in a family where her father had done very well in business. He had worked very hard and she and her brothers and sister had hardly seen him when they were growing up.

Then when the nurse was in her early twenties, her mother died suddenly. It was a huge shock for all the family, particularly for her father. For him it was like a bolt of lightning and after she was buried, he decided he saw no point in work and he left his business.

At first he was completely lost, he realised that he hardly knew his children or grandchildren, and they hardly knew him. He had no idea what to do with all the time that he suddenly had. In the past, all he had done was work.

Slowly but surely he started to spend time with his children and grandchildren; he sought out opportunities to spend time with them, and things he could do to make their life easier. He took to cutting their grass, bringing the grandchildren to school, going to watch them play in football matches, all the things he had been too busy to do when he was so caught up in his world of work.

A few weeks before his daughter was telling me this story he had sat across the kitchen table talking to her and said with tears in his eyes;

“This is what life is about – family, being there for each other, for the little things as well as the big ones. I missed this when you were all growing up.  I thought it was more important to have a new car and expensive holidays and a big house. I never realised how precious it is just to be able to sit and talk.

When I think back I realise I  didn’t really know you or any of my children, it’s only since your mum died that I have got to know you all. I miss her very much, but I can’t believe how much joy there is in my life now.”  

His daughter said he got up, gave her a big hug and told that her he loved her, and that he was now going out to tidy her garden.

In the midst of the sadness was a miracle in disguise. The man discovered what life was all about. He learned that there were lots of things that were much more valuable and important than the material things he had once dedicated his life to.