Don't Want To Get Run Over

Life has a practice of living you if you don't live it. --Philip Larkin

I used to say that I didn't care if I died sooner rather than later as long as I lived until I died. I meant it, but unfortunately I didn't have any understanding of what it meant to live. I thought "living" was living for myself and my own pleasure, that it was doing what I wanted when I wanted to do it, that somehow life was only worth living if almost every moment was filled with some sort of excitement, pleasure and or enhancement. But I wasn't truly living when I existed with this attitude. I didn't make any of my own choices. What I did and when was controlled by my circumstances, by what impulses were triggered. I was led through life by the nose, and the reason that I didn't care if I lived long or not was that despite the occasional pleasure, despite the excitement, and even with all the enhancement my life was miserable.

Today I thank God that I have learned to live. More than that, I have learned to live sober and clean. Living is not about some level of excitement or how much of the boredom of everyday life I can escape. It is about enjoying those everyday moments. Living is appreciating and truly taking pleasure in the still quiet moments as well as the fun and exciting times. It is about the joy that comes from helping others. It is the contentment of being able to love and keep myself company as well as enjoying the company of friends and loved ones. Living is finding relationship with my Creator and watching that relationship grow. Living is doing the next right thing and staying on the path that God has put me on and basking in the peace that doing so brings. But even if you're on the right road, you'll get run over if you don't keep moving. When I do the things above, I keep moving and making progress. I am driving down the road of life and following the directions that I have been given to ensure I reach my destination safely. It is when I stop even while staying on the right road that life has an ability to catch up with me and run me over. Today I would rather live my life as I have learned than take the chance of being run over by it.