Welcome to Today

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Welcome to today.*

It is a typical day, a day like any other. Maybe the sun is shining, maybe it’s not.

While it may appear that today is a day like any other, I invite you to take a closer look. Today is special, in fact, it’s the only day we’ve got. Yesterday is behind us and tomorrow may or may not come.

Today, in all its glory, is ours to enjoy. In fact, there will never be another day just like today. The interactions you have with people, the conversations, the opportunities, the combination of sights and sounds and feelings. Even the weather, the formation of the clouds, the way you look at things will never be exactly the same as it is at this moment.

So we have two choices, we can hurry through the moments of our day – in a rush to get to another Friday. We can dash through our tasks, eager to put them behind us. We can multi-task in the hopes of accomplishing more than humanly possible in 24 hours.

Or we can be mindful, grateful, and appreciative as we navigate the moments of our day. We can see, instead of merely looking at, our surroundings. Noticing the changing colours of the seasons, the smell of pine trees or freshly cut grass.

We can sit down for a conversation, stop whatever else we are doing, notice the eye color of the person we are conversing with. We can ask more questions, interrupt less and be genuinely interested in what the other person is sharing.

We can taste our food, instead of just ingesting it. We can notice the color, the texture, the temperature of what is nourishing our bodies. We can observe the feeling of being satisfied, which happens before we are full. We can appreciate our bodies, in all their perfect imperfection.

We can notice how the chair feels on our back, how our feet feel inside our shoes, how dextrously our fingers fly over the keyboards (or not), we can take some really deep breaths, feeling the cool air come in through our nose and our stomachs contracting when we exhale.

We can pause, and notice the ease of our life – hot water flowing through our taps, how electricity comes at the flip of a switch, how easily and effortlessly we can be warm and comfortable. How we can use our disposable income to do activities just for the sake of pure pleasure.

And perhaps most importantly, we can look across the table (or perhaps through the computer) and see people who love us. People who influence our life, people who matter to us, people who give us unconditional love. We can enjoy and linger in the sweet kiss, fall into the embrace and be the last one to let go.

We can blow a kiss, share a smile, pass a wink – just because. Everyone wants more time in the day, but what if the exact amount of time we have is enough, what if we are enough, just the way we are. Maybe it’s just that we need to be more mindful of the time we have.

So my invitation to you today and this week is to enjoy and appreciate the special day that is today because it is not a typical day – it’s your day.

Be mindful.
Be appreciative.
Be grateful.
Be attentive.

Treat it like it is the first day of your life or the last. Allow yourself to be in awe and wonder. Because if you are not, today will be a day like any other – and you may just miss the best day of your life.

Today.

It is your day. And if you do nothing else – say thank you.

Cheering for you, Steph

*A reader shared this post that I wrote in 2014. Thanks to Loreen for paying this one forward, I needed to read that again.