On Christmas Day here at the old housienda on North Hutchinson Island, the usual glad tidings of the holiday took a back seat to the drama that was unfolding on the beach just beyond us.
What started out as a casual day beachside became disrupted by the sounds of choppers filling the air, first the sheriff, then the coast guard. Soon, they were joined by boats out on the water. Initially, we thought they were looking for sharks, a not uncommon activity out here… seems these critters have a negative impact on tourism when they get too close to the shore.
The island rumor mill said they were looking for drugs. And as the day turned into evening and the sweep continued, it seemed like a likely reason for the intensive search.
They weren’t looking for drugs, though. They were looking for a swimmer. It was Surendra Sri Thakur. Just 26, Surendra had become caught in a rip current at nearby Avalon Park. Christy Erlsten who was on the beach that day, paddled out on a borrowed Boogie board to rescue his cousin. But Surendra was still missing.
The next morning, I awoke to the sheriff’s chopper once more. It was now circling just up the beach. Round and round it went. I knew they had found the man. I couldn’t help but think about my own brother who went missing for a week before they found him in the Columbia River. I had prayed that they would find this swimmer sooner, as it was pure hell to live through a week (or even longer), knowing that you lost someone, but they are still missing and you can’t even begin the arduous and painful process of closure.
I have been unable to put my thoughts about this into words until today. It’s only because my cohort in crime, Denise, sent me a blog posting for a client about inspirational quotes for the coming year that my thoughts became clear.
She closed with this from Audrey Hepburn: “Pick the day. Enjoy it – to the hilt. The day as it comes. People as they come… The past, I think, has helped me appreciate the present – and I don’t want to spoil any of it by fretting about the future.”
We spend so much time wallowing in our own self pity that we can’t appreciate the present. As a voyeur on Facebook, I see it every day – my job sucks, I can’t find a guy, someone said something mean to me, I am going to get laid off, my husband is cheating on me, I got dumped, I have no money for retirement, if only this would happen, then I’d be happy – the list goes on and on.
I know I’ve posted my share of pity-parties. And yet, they all seem so stupid, so pointless and so banal when you think that perhaps this 26 year old Canadian who drowned would have welcomed any of our pitifully small problems just to have one more day on this earth.
We all get another go at it today. He doesn’t. We never know when this will be our last day. We never even know when it will be our last hour or even minute. And yet we fritter them away, mistakenly thinking that we have an unlimited supply.
A death so close to home reminds me that I don’t have a lot of time here. Even if I live to be 100, I’ve already passed the halfway point. And while 53 seemed like it was a long way off when I was in my 20s and 30s, it arrived before I knew it.
I have wasted way too many minutes, hours, weeks, months and years bitching about my life, about others and about my lot in life. I should have spent the time doing something about all of it instead.
But I had lots of time, or so I thought. So why not revel in everything that was wrong, rather that even the few things that may be right?
The answer why we do this is simple. It’s so much easier to bitch about what is wrong than it is to fix it. And it’s easier to point to some unspecified place in our future where all the tumblers magically fall into place (yeah, like that happens), than it is to simply choose to be happy right now.
I am learning this lesson as we speak – to be happy with the “right now” not the “some day”. I write a lot about my past these days not because of nostalgia, but because the lessons learned there have relevancy in my life today, and perhaps some relevancy to others. I don’t think fondly of the good old days – they are just days – history, something I can recount and reflect on, but can’t change.
I can’t influence the future either. While we like to think we are the masters of our own universe, we are not. We can’t control what the future holds. The future is intentionally unknown to us, and the powers that be (the universe, God, nature, what have you) determine our eventual fate.
While we can’t control it, we can influence it by what we do each and every day. We can dream big, we can embrace life, we can love as fully as we can, we can be true to our word, we can accomplish what we set out to do, but only a day at a time.
Planning for the future and believing that tomorrow will be a better day is an illusion. You get right now, this very second. You may not get another one. And if you do, you may not get another minute, hour or day.
A senseless death should give us all pause to think how fragile our existence here is on earth. At any moment, by choice, accident or fate, we can be taken from here, from the ones we love, from the ones who count on us, and even the ones we were supposed to meet some day.
Ralph Waldo Emerson hit is on the head when he said, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
Don’t miss a single moment of your life. Count your blessings that you’re here on this earth, even if your current situation seems unbearable or even hopeless. Use every moment you have to be happy with what you have, spread joy and love to everyone you meet, forgive yourself and others, quit yearning for the way things used to be or might have been, and for god’s sake, quitcher bitchin’!
One day you won’t have any more chances to change your world and the world around you. Do it now… a precious moment at a time.
Out on the Treasure Coast, thinking how lucky I am to be alive today!
– Robb