When someone asked Isaac Asimov, "If you knew you would die tomorrow, what would you do?"
He answered: "I'd type faster.
I have adopted his answer.
Not that anyone told me I was going to die tomorrow, but when you go into the hospital, they always bring up the end-of-life directive. They want to know what to do with you if your heart stops beating.
I had a heart attack this past week and was in the hospital for two days.
But now I'm home and talking to you, and my little fingers (not little) are typing faster.
I had a super stressful event, and I thought my reaction was an adrenaline rush, except that after my daughter badgered me into having a blood test, it revealed that the enzyme that is released when the heart is damaged was in my blood.
See, your heart calls out for help when it needs it.
Take that advice to heart. If you need help or support, ask for it. Our mission is, or should be, to support each other.
And see how often we use the word 'heart'? "Bless your heart." "Heart-break," I love you with all my heart."
Your heart is sweet and lovable—love it back.
The afternoon after I came home from the hospital, I lay on the couch reading a novel. Sweetpea our little dog lay on the pillow beside my head. Zeke, our 3-legged German Shepherd lay on the couch at my feet warming them. And Laffe, the coon-hound lay on the floor beside me.
This is heaven, I thought.
Since I believe in the Mind-Body-Spirit connection, that our physical issues are not separate from our minds, and that our minds are not separate from our Spiritual understandings, I'm here to say, I don't know what the f* I'm talking about.
But I do know about being grateful.
I love my life, and I love having one. I love having the opportunity to express myself on the page and having people read what I write. There are many reasons to be grateful.
And today I just had a conversation with my husband about LIFE.
As I have mentioned before, I signed up for a major in Biology after the college professor yelled out over a class of about 200, "This is the study of LIFE."
Biologists study living things—and dead ones. But they don't know about life.
Nobody does.
The subject moves into an esoteric, philosophical, theological, idealistic, and magical reality, and yes, a biological one, but that's the physical part.
We are more than our bodies.
Think about it, we have always been alive—except for First Cause, and I don't know about that. We came from our parents, who came from their parents, back and way back some 300,000 years to the Mitochondrial Eve, the first woman. How did she come into being?
Here we are, a result of that magical progression, and look what we are doing. Instead of saying, "Wow, look at us. Aren't we lucky!" We gripe and complain, and treat each other, as well as the animals and the earth, poorly. I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about the collective humanity. Which, it seems to me, is having an identity crisis right now.
Collective humanity doesn't know who they are or what to think. Or they believe so strongly that they will beat their fellows over the head with a belief system, or shoot them.
Yet, they have the spark of life in them.
Where did that come from?
You might say, "From God," but that is magic. What is Life?
Those ova and sperm were alive before they got together and fired off an entirely new set of instructions.
It's time for me to reconnect with some of my long-held inspirations and motivations.
Are you with me?
Here is my oracle for the day from Thomas and Penelope Pauley:
"The sooner you define your life, the easier it is for the Universe to create it for you."