My dad absolutely loved his life.
He loved his wife, his seven children, living in Colorado, racing cars for a hobby, laughing, and sometimes, really loud music. He was a morning person, up before the sun and always on the go.
My dad was one of the good ones. It wasn’t easy being his daughter and there were a handful of years during my adolescence when we struggled pretty mightily in relationship. I wish I had been able to appreciate his wisdom at the time, but I was busy being a teenager and learning to appreciate my own.
He used to ask me “What’s going on good?” and I can remember sometimes struggling to answer him. He lived his life knowing that good is ALWAYS available, so long as we are open to recognizing it. In honor of my dad, I’m sharing a few things I learned from him…
Life is beautiful.
I happen to live in Colorado – all I have to do is look around me to be reminded. It’s in the color of the sky, especially in all its shades of blue. It’s in the gentle sound of the wind chimes outside my door when a breeze blows through them. It’s in the magnificence of the mountains when I look west from my porch. It’s in the warmth of the sun, even on a cold day.
I find beauty in my family and in my friendships and in the work that I do for a living. There is beauty in connection and beauty in making meaning.
Look around you. What beauty do you find when you look for it?
Life is practice.
Since the start of 2017, I’ve been working with the Everyday52™ contentment card deck and I’m practicing paying more attention to how I am living my life. In the first seven weeks, I’ve been more focused on letting love in, touch, taking the stairs, tickling my funny bone, making eye contact, being thoughtful, and getting my zzzzz’s. This week I’m adding the practice of stretching.
By practicing life a week at a time, I’ve discovered there’s more contentment available to me as part of the foundation for how I choose to live.
How do you practice living your life?
Life is short.
Some days are harder than others. Cancer took my dad from me almost 27 years ago and there are times I feel his absence so profoundly it’s as if no time has passed. He died too young and I miss him. A lot.
It takes effort and courage to lean into living and I do the best I can with each day. It’s why practicing contentment is so important to me. I am choosing to live every single day with the awareness that how I LIVE my life defines my life!
What might you choose to do differently as you live your everyday?
Life is good.
I took the photo used for this blog post on Friday, February 17th when I was hiking in Boulder, Colorado at sunrise. It would have been my dad’s 78th birthday.
In a sense, I felt as if my dad was asking me “what’s going on good?” as the colors spread throughout the sky.
That magnificent sunrise reminded me of how much my dad absolutely loved his life. And, how much I love mine.
And, how I will always love him.
