Most people aren’t living. They react to life. I thought about this and knew I wasn’t living much, either. I was reacting to life and allowing the past to infiltrate my present, repeatedly causing me the same damn pain! Why would I or anyone do that?

For me, and maybe for others, too, I’ve been afraid to live. Reacting to life is so much easier, right? We get to make excuses, complain, blame others, and feel justified when things don’t go our way. It’s always someone or something else’s fault why we are stressed out, having problems, and unhappy.

So, then, what does it mean to live?

Being accountable for our thoughts and actions and having a strong desire to create a good life help us live more fully. And the first necessary action is to figure out who we are. Once we do that, then we could decide whether we’ll honor that person and live that life. It’s a simple choice but a scary one, I know.

To live means we need to be awake, aware, and stop reacting to life. Just yesterday, I was putting clothes in the dryer, and a thought popped into my head that was not pleasant, and I allowed it to happen.

When we first got our new dryer, I never read the manual. I took it for granted that a dryer is a dryer; I just needed to select the temperature, etc., and then run it. Well, this dryer wouldn’t shut off. It kept tossing the articles around a few times after the cycle. Did I bother to find the manual or look it up online? No. I let it do its thing until it stopped, or I got tired of hearing it and manually ended the cycle. At that time, more vital issues consumed my time.

We had some company over, and one of the guests told me (in what I viewed as an arrogant ‘I know more than you, you idiot’ voice) that there was a button that allowed the dryer to continue to spin to prevent wrinkles and all I had to do was turn it off. Had I read the manual, I wouldn’t have experienced that embarrassment, but more so, pain from feeling less intelligent than her because I didn’t know that.

I rarely thought about the memory, but yesterday I did, and I got angry again. This time, instead of beating myself up for not reading the manual, I gave myself compassion, knowing I was dealing with terrible neck pain from an injury and was barely holding on, so the last thing I worried about was reading a manual. So, I told myself to STOP bringing up a memory from the past that hurt me and think of something good and positive. And that’s what I did.

Why did that memory surface? I’m not sure. But I know I was reacting to a memory and not living in the present. Knowing this, I won’t let it affect me negatively again. I realized it was a moment in time, and I had to move on. That’s what living is. Moving on from one moment to the next and not letting them bleed into one another and mess up your present. Because after a while of doing that, you get saturated with pain from wounds that aren’t allowed to heal. You keep opening the wounds.

When the incident happened, I wasn’t honoring myself and being true to who I am. If I were, I would have said to the woman, “Thank you. Good to know. I didn’t get to read the manual because life’s been hectic dealing with more important things.” By saying that, I would have been honest and held her accountable that it was not okay to speak to me like I was an unruly child. Even if we know something, let’s not be an ass about it.  I’ve dealt with too many know-it-alls that somehow felt it was okay to talk to me like I was an idiot and they were superior. It only made them look foolish, not me.

We have one life to live, so let’s make it the best. Reacting to life is a coward’s way of getting by just enough to make it through the days. That’s not enough! We deserve to live each day to the fullest. It sounds like a cliché, but it’s the truth.

Let’s find a way to change up our routines, laugh more at silly things, and find more enriching things to do that matter, that fill us up with good stuff.

To living,

Francesca