We spend so much of our time planning ahead.  Our calendars fill up.  Money is spent before it’s received.  Our vacation is gone before it’s even begun.  Or, we spend much of our time living in the past.  We should’ve/could’ve done this or that.  Did we make the right decision?  I didn’t mean what I did or said.

Then we get those moments where we can be fully present.  We hold the child in our lap, singing her softly to sleep.  We hold the hand of our dying grandpa.  We feel the cool water running over our feet.  We listen.  We feel.  And deep in our hearts we know there’s no other place to be, nothing else we should be doing.  This moment is worth being in now, and we will have no regrets.

Is it the Tibetan monks who have the practice or mantra about dying every morning?  If we all awoke daily with an acceptance of death, would we live differently?  Life happens, often despite our better plans, and truthfully, death happens, too.  We do have a beautiful cycle.  We just also have a tendency to muck it up.

To “go with the flow” sounds cliche these days, but I keep reminding my children to do just that.  Sometimes we have to do that which we don’t want to do.  Our responsibilities often take precedence over play time, but we can’t let them always spoil the fun.  We have to go with the flow, ride the rapids and sometimes shake things up a bit.

Ironically, after accepting death we realize that we can more fully live.