Sometimes I’ll stop and realize that I’m not living my life. Instead, sometimes I waste my life. I waste it wishing for the next bit of life. I thought it would be interesting to write an extreme example of how life can be if I’m forgetting to live it, and then try to paint a picture with words of how life can be when I truly remember to live it. And so I created Jane.

Meet Jane. Jane is a normal girl living a normal life. This is her life:

6:45 a.m: Jane’s alarm clock goes off. She moans, growls, hits the snooze, rolls over and tries to pretend she’s not awake. She doesn’t want to get up yet. Her mind goes over all the responsibilities and obligations for the day.

7:00-8:00 a.m: Jane readies herself for work, all-the-while dreading going to work…so wishing she didn’t have to go in today.

8:00-11:55 a.m: Jane waits anxiously for her lunch break.

12:00-1:00 p.m: Jane spends the first half of her lunch break re-visiting a scene that happened yesterday…what she said and did and how her friend reacted. She considered what she and her friend could have done differently. She wishes she had been more kind. Jane spends the second half of her lunch break dreading her break being over and having to get back to work.

1:00-5:00 p.m: Jane waits anxious for the work day to end.

5:00-6:00 p.m: Jane is frustrated and irritated with traffic…with the lines at the deli….with everything keeping her from getting home and finally enjoying her day! (yes, that’s sarcastic and ironic…and kind of true and funny, huh?)

6:00-10:00 p.m: Jane can’t wait for bed.

10:00-11:00 p.m: Jane worries about work tomorrow: her obligations, her responsibilities…

And so Jane’s day rolls in to another day.

Toward the end of the week she begins to wait for the weekend…but when the weekend arrives, she begins to dread the coming week. Weeks turn in to months and months turn in to years: Jane’s life.

—–Keep reading! It gets better!—–

Meet Jane. Jane is a normal, happy girl living a fabulous life. This is Jane’s life:

6:45 a.m: Jane’s alarm clock goes off. She still feels sleepy but she takes a moment to just breathe and be thankful for life. She’s alive. She’s healthy. She’s comfortable in her bed. She doesn’t hop out of bed energized but sleepily reviews her thankful list for that day. She includes a short “thank you” for the cat who’s pushing at her nose with his paw reminding her it’s time to feed him…

7:00-8:00 a.m: When Jane pours her coffee she relishes the smell of it…the warmth of it…the taste of it. She glances at the clock and realizes she has ten minutes she can use to sit on the porch and truly enjoy that cup of coffee…the hummingbirds…the flowers she planted on the porch…the morning air. She does so and she is thankful. In the shower she luxuriates in the feeling of the warm, clear water running over her head and body.  On the way to work she looks over to the side of the road and accidentally catches the eye of a cyclist. She smiles and the cyclist smiles back.  On the way in to her office building she looks up in amazement at the cloud formations. They are especially fabulous this day.

8:00 a.m.-11:55 a.m: Jane immerses herself in her work. She completely focuses on what she is doing and has a few moments of intense creativity that makes her heart sing. There is truly nothing as fulfilling to Jane as creating something….adding something to the world that wasn’t there before.

12:00-1:00 p.m: Jane uses her lunch hour to re-connect with one of her co-workers. They have a nice lunch together (she chooses her food carefully, truly tastes it, and it is incredible) and talk about a variety of subjects. There are quite a few “Me, too!” moments in their conversation. At one point they discuss a misunderstanding Jane and another friend had experienced the day before and try to brainstorm how to reconstruct the relationship.  Jane quickly realizes, however, there is not much she can do about it at this moment in time so she says “it is what it is” and expects to have an opportunity later to work things out with her friend.

1:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m: Jane continues to immerse herself in the work but when someone requires her assistance she transitions from the work to the person…giving the person her full attention…and then returning to her work to give it her full attention. She does run in to some snags in her work–things she can’t seem to work out herself. Instead of tagging these snags “bad”, she again says to herself “it is what it is” and continues on with her day.

5:00-6:00 p.m:  Jane faces the challenge of returning home and stopping at a deli for some dinner. When stuck in traffic, she turns on her favorite radio station and sings at the top of her lungs, enjoying the tempo and lyrics. In the deli line she chats with the older gentleman behind her and is fascinated by some of the town history he shares with her. She forgets that the traffic and the deli-line are just stops on the way to her “real life”…she allows them to be her life at that moment in time.

6:00-10:00 p.m: Jane has a few moments when the work-related “snags” she ran in to at her job work themselves in to her thought process, but she quickly disperses them knowing she can’t fix them at this time. Instead she focuses on each moment of her evening, experiencing them fully….her dinner, a swim in the pool, a walk around the neighborhood, a telephone conversation,  a few chapters of a good book.

10:00-11:00 p.m: Jane lies in bed recreating her thankful list for this day. And Jane sleeps soundly.

And so Jane purposefully lives and savors each moment of her day…and the next…and the next. Her life is full…

Full of moments. She knows that there truly is only the NOW.

As the wise tortoise in Kung Fu Panda says: “Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. But today is a gift. That is why they call it the present.”