Opportunity. What a brilliant word. It is filled with such promise.
I read a quote this morning that has since stayed with me. It reverberates in my mind. I hear its echo throughout my day, taunting me, nudging me, reminding me. It is this:
"Just for today, we are here. We are alive. And with that aliveness comes a profound responsibility to do what we can. To make meaning and beauty out of what is." ― Dani Shapiro
It may not mean that tomorrow we are someplace else, or that we are not alive.
But it may.
Who ever really knows what is around the corner?
Then all the more reason to drink in the moment. Take advantage of where we are, and whom we're with, and what is on our plate.
Perhaps its significance is more haunting because of the hints of change. Can you deny that change isn't prevalent in all of our lives in one way or another? Our lives are constantly affected by for sale signs, doctors' diagnoses, graduations, job changes, births. And deaths.
The challenge then lies in making meaning and beauty out of whatever state we are in. The challenge lies in living large, and drinking in the fresh sea air, and snapping a million pictures of an ever changing ocean because opportunities that are here today may be gone tomorrow.
And when our circumstances change, we embrace the newness with whatever courage is called for.
Again.
And again.
