To illustrate this point a university professor stood in front of his students and asked a simple question, “How long have you lived?”
One of the students responded, “Twenty-four years.” The professor then swiftly replied, “No, that is how long your heart has been pumping blood.” Using his life experience the professor then went on to suggest some of the moments when we are really alive. These were when we take hold of a moment in time and can recall it so vividly that the moment lives on in our hearts and minds long after living the actual moment has past.
You may be thinking of one of those moments in your life right now. For me I have one that stays with me and is as alive today as it was more than thirty-one years ago. I was a youthful twenty-one-year-old with hair, (and plenty of it) wearing my bright green shorts, my red puma boots and my yellow singlet standing on top of the world’s tallest building at the time – the World Trade Centre. I have a photo and my blue ticket stub imprinted with the words, ‘World Trade Centre Observation Deck’. It was an incredible experience looking down at the traffic like ants hundreds of metres below, feeling the sway in the building and the gusts of wind blowing the tears in my eyes into my ears as I watched the whole of Manhattan beneath me going to work that day. I knew on that day I was fully alive.
Asking the question to the class again the professor said, “How long have you lived?”
The student at the back of the class shrugged his shoulders and said, “When you put it that way… a minute, maybe two minutes.”
The professor revealed that most of us spend our lives without living in those all-too-few moments of time when we are really alive and really reflecting. He went on to say the most meaningful times are created when we pause to reflect upon our lives. The lesson the professor literally conveyed to the students was that a failure to reflect on life means that we do not gather our experiences whether mundane or magnificent. Because of ‘just doing life’ we live a life of drudgery rather than daring, and we fail to consider anything of significance.
However, the professor would say it is in these supposedly idle moments that often our real inspiration is found. Reflecting is important, and it helps you to gather your thoughts, consider your journey, think about your highs and lows, and assemble the life experiences you have had so that you can contemplate your story and the path you are taking.
You are important – and it’s important to take time out just for you. When your world is right, everything else is! – from Business by the Heart by Andrew Hoggard
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