>Perspective by Association

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Have desert

Some bad stuff has been happening to a few of my friends. One’s mother was just diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She has 3 to 6 months to live. She found out on Thursday. Another one got laid off from a company she’d been working at for 15 years. I think she might have known that it was a possibility for the last few months, but it’s still upsetting.

While them impact of these occurrences isn’t direct, it does make me take a moment to reflect. Things in life can change in the blink of an eye.  Stability is an illusion. Sometimes a loved one is suddenly stricken with a disease for which there is no prevention or cure.  Sometimes you are employed and the next moment you are not.

I feel like I need to get a firmer grasp on the present. Instead of fretting about the future, as we are wont to do, I just want to enjoy the taste of my cheap Cabernet or the sound of my nephew’s laughter. I don’t want to live in fear. I want to do a few of those things I probably shouldn’t like go on vacation when I should be saving money for a rainy day or retirement and not feel completely awful about it. I want to buy those $8 nail polishes I enjoy so much and not feel guilty because I should have only spent $3 to paint my nails instead.

I know all of these are choices I have to make inside my head. I’m trying to remember that most of life is fleeting, so if it’s not harming anyone, I might as well do whatever I want and enjoy myself.