Hodie foveam; cherish today. You have a chance to write your story, will you take it? If so, who will be your audience; the few, the power brokers, the beautiful and the celebrated? Or will it be the many; the broken, the outcast, the incarcerated, the dregs of society and the politician? Still unsure? You can start by writing your story to an audience of one!
Cherish the Moment
We are the hero in our story, and it’s ours to cherish. We think of our story in the context of who is listening and who we think would care. Ask yourself, who would connect with your story; the 1% or the refugee living on pennies a day, or neither? What a daunting decision, yet each day we decide who we want to be part of our story and with whom we will share it.
Today, someone somewhere will live out a mountain top experience, creating memories that he or she will cherish for a lifetime, while some other poor soul will endure his or her worst nightmare. Some events will make it into the highlight reel and will be retold at family gatherings long after we are gone. Others are fodder for home-made YouTube videos, bloopers and out-takes, so embarrassing or so horrific that we pray that others will soon forget. Lastly, there are those tragic events that rock our world; it’s the stuff that shapes our worldview. As much as we would like to forget, it is these that we relive and remember.
For some, today is just an extension of yesterday, and all of the yesterdays before, defined by the will to resist falling victim to the mundane or to yield to the inevitable. The day begins with a restlessness that prompts us to get out of bed; taunting us to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary and to accept the challenge to make our story come to life. Some would say it’s a calling, initiated by the burning desire to harness that restlessness and direct it into something intended to inspire and meant to cherish. For many of us, our past experiences are indicative of our future endeavors!
Scotty, We Need More Power
What will it take for us to consider writing our story from the perspective that today is a new day, one rich with possibilities? We can start with a clean slate. We have no recollection of the experiences and events that formed the scar tissue we carry. We are the soldier with no memory of the battles we fought, the doctor with no recall of how many lives you saved or lost or the starry-eyed politician who forgot how many times he sold out his constituency. You bear the wounds but do not carry the memories.
Could we even write our story without a clear understanding of where we have been? Would we sign up for that five-year mission to boldly go where no man had gone before you if we knew that there is a tractor beam that keeps us tethered to our past? So, where do we go from here? To begin, we must come to grips with this paradox — we build our future on our past, but our past need not define our future.
Hodie Foveam
Those of us with degenerative conditions have the burden of living in the shadow that today may very well be the best day for the rest of our lives. But guess what, those of you who don’t have degenerative conditions have the same prospect before you. With that said, who has the more significant challenge to cherish the day, those of us with an incentive of which we are aware, or those who live in ignorance that their motivation should be different?
Cherish today! Today, we get 24 hours to use as we see fit and to live but once. What will you do today to make your story one you will cherish and is worthy of retelling?
How are you going to hodie foveam?
Thanks for reading and liking; sharing is always appreciated.
Nice touch with the Latin, Ivy. It’s amazing what you can accomplish when the battery to your iPhone dies.
Al and his faithful, but isolated sidekick, Ivy the wonder pup.
Sorry, Ivy, we will have to wait a week or so to share our big news.