“Don’t leave anything for later because later the coffee gets cold, later you lose interest, later the day turns into night, later people grow, later people grow old, later life goes by, later you regret not doing something when you had the chance, so stop waiting for the perfect moment that may never come, do it today, do it now, because life is happening right now and remember time slips away when you least expect it,” Denzel Washington.  This year has been a lesson in doing things in the now.  When we save things for later, we are only putting off what life can be now.  Why do we need to wait for what is available to us here and now?  Why do we put some arbitrary time frame on experiencing what we have now or what we can build now?  With the losses I’ve faced this year, the limbo myself and my family have lived through, and with how rapidly this year seems to have gone by, this quote resonates powerfully.  All we have is now.  Anytime we wait, we are delaying our lives.  I want to throw in the caveat that sometimes waiting is necessary as we need certain things to align or we need to accept guidance toward a better path—this type of immediacy is better served with decision making.  Don’t allow fear to stop us from doing what calls to us, from doing what makes sense to us, from doing what we love.  We are never too old to experience life or make changes—we tend to regret what we don’t do over what we did do unless that is a missed opportunity. 

This year my family has experienced first hand the pain of unexpected illness and loss repeatedly.  Witnessing what it is like to spend a lifetime hoarding things, waiting for the right opportunity to do what we really want only to see it fall apart, to see the things we so lovingly held onto for that right moment crumble away due to no use, made it painfully clear that all we have is now.  We have each other and we have this gift of time so there is no reason to not move forward when we have the opportunity.  The universe has show repeatedly that when the opportunity presents itself, that opportunity is meant for us.  Don’t hold back because we are waiting for something else to come, some evidence that we are truly worthy of who we are.  That “evidence” we seek may never come.  We are responsible for receiving, managing, expressing, and utilizing our gifts to the best of our ability.  To seizing the moment and creating the life we desire, the life we are meant to have.  This world has opened up in ways we couldn’t have imagined even 40 or 20 years ago.  The way time moves has changed, and because we are all connected all the time—time is irrelevant in many ways.  So don’t let good things go to waste waiting for what we think is the perfect time.  There is no perfect time, there is only now. If we wait for the fruit to ripen too long, it rots. And someday we wake up and we are seeing an old face in the mirror.

This also follows on the heels of what we spoke about yesterday: sometimes we surprise ourselves when we take the chances we didn’t think we could.  Sometimes all we have to do is recognize the feeling and listen to the little voice that says, “This feels right, this might be something we like, we should do this—we could do this.”  In many cases that’s all the universe needs.  We just have to be willing participants in our own lives.  I think one of the biggest regrets I have now is how many times I said no.  So much of my self-doubt and fear led me to believe that I could never do the things I wanted to do, that somehow they weren’t meant for me.  I held a lot of resentment because years later I saw that many of those doubts weren’t even mine—they were residual from beliefs of other people around me.  Now I am surrounded by people who do nothing but take chances and have fun and live exactly as they want to, exactly as who they are.  They have no shame or regret, they just live their lives as they see fit.  I used to think that was selfish, now I see how smart it is.  I also see how embracing themselves fully has allowed them to not only be more present, but to be more generous and ABLE to give.  They aren’t sacrificing what they don’t have hoping for more later, they are developing what they do have and multiplying it.  Presence changes things—it shows us who we are.  It allows us to be who we are—and it is as simple as this: that’s all the universe wants, the fullest, most authentic version of who we are, right here, right now.