"While we are postponing, life speeds by."

The trick of life is that is seems so permanent when it is not.

This is what I was thinking yesterday as I took a walk outside in what felt like a reasonable temperature for late November.  I love taking walks, it is nearly the longest-running activity in my life (second only to eating and pooping).  Simply walking and observing the sights and sounds, letting thoughts come and go; do we get enough of this relatively quiet and reflective time in our lives nowadays?  I use this time and opportunity to reconnect.

There is beauty in the here and now, in each day.  And yet it is the mundane that often tricks us into ignoring the subtleness of life.  If perhaps, we can regularly free ourselves from the modern distractions - place limits in our lives - we could begin to heal and restore more of ourselves.  We need not be connected all the time in the modern-sense.  There is restoration, creativity, gratitude, wisdom, and peace in changing our connections.

"Nothing is ours except time.  We were entrusted by nature with the ownership of this single thing, so fleeting and slippery that anyone who will can oust us from possession.  What fools these mortals be!  They allow the cheapest and most useless things, which can easily be replaced, to be charged in the reckoning, after they have acquired them; but they never regard themselves as in debt when they have received some of that precious commodity, - time!"

I have noticed that the people who seem intolerable to me are not those with differences of opinion, they are those who fail to grasp that we are all connected and it is our connection to each other and to nature, not our personal pursuits, that is the most fundamental aspect of our lives.  But to understand this we need to disconnect from what is temporary and of little value and reconnect with what is universal and timeless.  When we watch the movement of the celestial bodies, when the animals migrate and seasons change, when a baby is born or a loved one dies, when we are hungry and receive food, when we laugh and cry, when we do physical labor...these are universal and timeless.  These are ways of connection and meaningful living.  "What fools these mortals be!  They allow the cheapest and most useless things...to be charged in the reckoning..."

Although we assign meaning, many things we give meaning to are meaningless.  This is some sort of trap.  It is a limiting construct of the mind, a self-limiting belief.  Have you ever felt a problem or obstacle in life was smothering you?  This is precisely the situation in which questioning current beliefs would be most valuable.  Like bathing cleanses us physically, belief-evaluation should be practiced regularly for good health of the mind and emotions.

I charge you to consider time your only asset, some of which will be stripped away from you by no fault of your own, but for the most part, time is yours.  Be essential.  Evaluate what is temporary versus what is timeless and chose your connections carefully.