See The Day

Seize the day is a popular and irritating maxim. The implication is that life is fleeting so we should make our moments count by seizing the opportunities we have and squeezing out every drop of goodness.

Sounds a little harsh to me.

I mean, some things don’t respond well to being seized. Time is one of them. Puppies are another. Seize some things and you could get slapped or even arrested.

I want to appreciate the day but stressing about time only makes it slip through your fingers faster. Worry does not make a day well spent.

I don’t know about you but I’ve seized a few days so hard that I missed them entirely. Career became foremost while the best parts of my life happened without me.

Because life goes on whether you are there or not. Children grow. Cloudless blue skies sail aloft. Spring blooms and warms into summer’s haze.

Seizing implies control that we don’t really have. Given the foibles of mankind I think giving us more control wouldn’t turn out well. I can barely get out of bed when my alarm goes off. Imagine if I were responsible for the coming of Spring.

We barely notice the blessings we bathe in every day. We ignore jaw dropping miracles just because they happen as consistently as the sunrise. Why are they undervalued because they are dependable? You would think miracles you can count on would be the best kind.

So perhaps we should stop thrashing around trying to seize things beyond our control and open our eyes to what happens without our throttling grasp.

See the day! If I can do that clearly then it will not be another day gone by unnoticed, never to return.

 “The infinite wonders of the universe are revealed to us in exact measure as we are capable of receiving them. The keenness of our vision depends not on how much we can see, but on how much we feel.”― Helen Keller, The World I Live In