The real luxuries in life: Waking without an alarm, nourishing meals, time for self and family, abundant gardens, no budget traveling.  These are the experiences of life.  This is life as it is, the things we can’t buy, the things we can’t replace.  Things change as we age and experience what life has to offer.  We learn the things that really matter.  Our circles get smaller. We simultaneously want less and more.  With time, understanding of what life is actually about and what it means takes hold and we learn that we need less things and more substance.  Things can be destroyed, taken, lost.  Substance permeates the mind, body, and soul. Substance is what life is.  Substance is exactly the luxury we are talking about: the ability to live in the moment and be fully present to life, the ability to live life on its own schedule and in its own rhythm.  Perhaps it’s just clarity that comes, but something shifts in our definition of what’s important.  It isn’t cliché to say that time is the most precious resource.  It is truly the only resource we have that once spent is truly gone. 

We have immense freedom to choose what we do with our time and so often it feels like we are waiting for things to happen and then all of a sudden we wake up and we are 40 with a home, kids, a job that we sort of kind of (hate) tolerate.  I hate to feel like that’s normal, that we can go through a large portion of our lives and then ask ourselves how the hell we got there, like we went through it like a zombie.  I know there are people out there who live every second and they have no regrets—or if they have regrets they at least appreciate the memory.  But there is this other side to it where people wake up and they feel like they haven’t lived at all and half of their time is gone.  For them, we need to unravel and unpeel how we got there, we need to look at where we are, what we are doing, where we want to go, and yes, we need to look at the lies we were told that swindled us into giving up the one thing we can’t get back.

Part of this process is realizing what we have and, not just appreciating it, but understanding it.  Understanding the meaning of luxury, of what is important, of what we actually need in this world.  The ability to shift into creative expression and abundance, the ability to feel peace, happiness, and security.  The ability to shut out what we heard for the last however many years and start to follow what we feel, what we know.  To trust our own knowing again.  There is an awakening in that moment, a coming alive that can only happen with death.  We are so much richer than we know.  All we have to do is let go of what we thought we knew, slow down, and wakeup to what we have.  Ironically it is in slowing down that time speeds up.  The window opens to all the time in the world when we realize we are infinitely here.  In one long moment.  Awaken from within and appreciate what we have, what we know in the depths of our souls.  Trust the instinct, the inner voice and do not be afraid to put down what we’ve previously believed would bring us satisfaction.  Indulge in the aliveness of being here and now and see there is an infinite now.  We just have to lay down the ultimate sacrifice: who we were has to die, and we have to awaken to who we ARE.