Living Life...

It always amuses me when I hear someone blaming their childhood for how their life turned out. Life is a choice. You can choose to live or you can choose to just exist.

I get that you may have had the cards stacked against you. Your parents may have been losers, or you may not have had parents at all. You may have been surrounded all your life with people who were just existing, and you may think that's all that's possible for you. That's your choice. You can't blame your parents for that.

Living is hard. No one ever said it was easy. Some people just don't have the knack, if you know what I mean. They are the ones that see the glass half empty, that think everyone's out to get them, that the government owes them something. You can't help those people. They are so far removed from living they don't know that what they are doing isn't it.

Then there are those lucky ones that just get it, and don't even have to try. They are the ones that go through life exuberant, loving every moment, and taking advantage of every opportunity with abandon. They just know they are alive, and you can't help but watch them move through it with stark adoration, or you just want to shoot them for making it look so easy.

And then there's the rest of us. We know the choice exists, but it's a choice we have to make every day. In the middle of washing dishes, mowing the lawn, cleaning out the garage, we have to consciously stop whining and thank our lucky stars that we have dishes, a lawn, a garage. No, thanking isn't the right word. We ENJOY the fact that we have those things.

But more importantly, when an opportunity shows up that we actually recognize, in the moment, as an opportunity, we're the ones that have to consider the wisdom of pursuing it. Instead of jumping in with both feet as would the natural-born livers, we weigh the odds, discuss the pros and cons, and tentatively stick our toe in. About half of the time, we manage to step through that proverbial window in time. For the most part though, the window gets slammed shut with our toe still in it.

That's the rest of us. Cautiously living. Squinting into the sunlight.