Lilies of the Fields

something from Elen that I felt it's so good I wanna share... enjoy =)

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Lilies Of The Fields
By Anna Quindlen

I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I
know. Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. You
will walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no
one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your
same degree; there will be thousands of people doing what you want
to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has
sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life.
Not just your life at a desk, or your life on a bus, or in a car,
or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of
your heart. Not just your bank account but your soul.

People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so
much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume
is a cold comfort on a winter night, or when you're sad, or broke,
or lonely, or when you've gotten back the test results and
they're not so good.

Here is my resume: I am a good mother to three children. I
have tried never to let my profession stand in the way of being a
good parent. I no longer consider myself the center of the
universe. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend
to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they
say. I am a good friend to my friends, and they to me. Without
them, there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would
be a cardboard cutout. But I call them on the phone, and I meet
them for lunch. I would be rotten, or at best mediocre at my job,
if those other things were not true. You cannot be really first
rate at your work if your work is all you are.

So here's what I wanted to tell you today: Get a life. A
real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger
paycheck, the larger house.

Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if
you blew an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast?

Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water
pushing itself on a breeze over Seaside Heights, a life in which
you stop and watch how a red tailed hawk circles over the water or
the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up
a Cheerio with her thumb and first finger.

Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love,
and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is
work. Pick up the phone. Send an e-mail. Write a letter. Get a
life in which you are generous. And realize that life is the best
thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted.

Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it
around. Take money you would have spent on beers and give it to
charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister. All
of you want to do well. But if you do not do good too, then doing
well will never be enough. It is so easy to waste our lives, our
days, our hours, our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the
color of our kids' eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and
falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist
instead of to live.

I learned to live many years ago. I learned to love the
journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress
rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned
to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of it
back because I believed in it, completely and utterly.

And I tried to do that,in part, by telling others what I had
learned. By telling them this: Consider the lilies of the field.
Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the backyard with the sun
on your face.

Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness,
because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it
ought to be lived