I don't know about you but it seems every day i read in one journal or another about some amazing medical breakthrough that promises to banish forever otherwise incurable diseases, extend life indefinitely, and relieve us all from the ills and crosses we bear in everyday life. If only it were so.
There are indeed astounding developments on many fronts in the work being done to cure or alleviate sickness and pain, both physical and emotional. But once you go past the arresting headlines the reality is sometimes very different from the hope promised. The miracle cure worked in a lab but has never been tried on animals much less humans. The tests reveal that 3 people's lives were extended by a matter of months, or the discovery of a gene, enzyme or drug offers a glimmer of hope that down the road-5, 10 or maybe 20 years from now will actually prove therapeutic.
It isn't that the headlines are lying, over promising for sure, but responding to that very human aspiration--a way to fix whatever is wrong--with us, our loved ones and yes, total strangers. It is actually a very noble and endearing quality that leads us to embrace these whispers of hope, but all too often those who most fervently wish for a miracle find themselves bereft when medical science holds out no prospect of anything here and now.
I've been in this place, walked by the side of others in equally desperate straits praying, and appealing for something, anything that will prolong life and restore health. It is a sad and lonely place to be. The comedian George Carlin ruefully quipped that none of us are going to get out of life alive. We know this but we are gifted with the ability to compartmentalize, to put that thought out of mind as long as we can. And when we must face the inevitable we sue for time--just a little more time to love and be loved, to see another dawn, smell another rose. Yet just a day or week or month before, time stretched on seemingly forever and things we meant to do or say somehow never got said or done.
Please don't mistake me--I do not mean to offer morbid thoughts but rather reflect on the perversity of human-kind. We have a bad day or week or year and this happens to us all--and when it does we yearn for the time when things were calm, perhaps boring in their sameness. Few of us awaken with an attitude of gratefulness for the day-anticipation of all that we might accomplish, see, taste and feel. Only when our health fails, or that of a loved one do we reflect with remorse on where we have arrived on this journey of life.
We may take an oath otherwise, swear we will celebrate each day --and a special few do exactly that. But most of us soon find ourselves absorbed by the minutiae and concerns of the moment. Instead of counting our blessings we are numbering our concerns.
So on this day I want to raise a glass in toast to your health--whatever it may be--and ask you to join me in praise of just one thing you can commend about the day. If your thanks are not bountiful it's alright, but do try to find one precious thing however slight to raise up --the grace given in your life. Here's to you.
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