03 March 2012

Thoughts from Patti LaBelle

Look at life through the windshield, not the rearview mirror.

My sister Barbara tried to teach me this lesson more than twenty years ago.  At the time, she was planning her wedding under what I can only describe as bittersweet circumstances.  On the one hand, my sister was about to realize a life-long dream:  at age thirty-eight, she was about to marry the man she had been in love with since they were teenagers.  On the other, she had just been diagnosed with colon cancer. . . .

"What good would it do to be angry, Patsy?" she said gently.  "I can't change the past and I can't control the future.  I can, however, make the most of the present.  Shot and I are together now.  At this moment.  And, if you think about it, this moment is all any of us really has."

The ability to live fully in the moment--in the time and place we are right now--is one of the greatest secrets I know of living joyfully.  Because once you grasp it, freedom is very close.  You stop worrying about the past and stressing out about the future.  Enjoying life--not agonizing about what happened yesterday or what might happen tomorrow--becomes your priority.  Your days become a gift, not a grind.

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