Eat your Peas!

I’m back on my balance journey after being knocked off my pins for about a year and a half and it feels great! I’ve been thinking about a lot of things lately, so when a particular post from Nancy at A Rural Journey popped into my inbox at breakfast this morning, I could really relate to it. Nancy did such a beautiful job of expressing what I have been thinking about, and so I wrote to her and asked if I could post her blog post on my blog today (say that fast three times, lol!). She very graciously said yes! Which, I guess makes her my first official guest blogger!  Please pop on over and share some love with her for these beautiful words she is sharing with us. Thank you, Nancy!

Eat your peas

~Bill Cosby

Live in the now.

Be present.

Just be.

These phrases, although short and to the point, are often overused – the original intent somehow getting lost on us by virtue of their familiarity.

Yet, there are so many books and poems and notable quotes on the subject, I realize as a society, we must ponder the value of our days quite often — as they effortlessly, predictably –blur into one another.

Necessary daily tasks and routines must be accomplished before we can get to the interesting and motivating parts and pieces.

So it seems.

That’s being responsible.

Eat your peas or there will be no apple pie for dessert.

Not that there’s anything wrong with peas. I love peas.

But I’d rather have apple pie.

So here’s my point —

What if the apple pie never comes?

Do we have the forethought, the insight —

to savor, to appreciate the ordinary “peas”

as if they are something special, something sweet,

a feast?

We should.

Because they are.

As Henry David Thoreau said,

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”

It’s not always easy to do this,

particularly when one day or week

just blows.

Your perfect child is acting up in school; the dryer and the tv decided to go out simultaneously;

you locked yourself out of your internet banking account. Twice.

The trick is finding small moments of each day, each week — to fully inhabit.

Don’t suffer through the peas to enjoy the apple pie.

Enjoy your peas.

Because all we ever have is now