How Precious Is Your One and Only Life?

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

— Mary Oliver

My oldest daughter is a veterinary student who, as part of her work study, just finished a few weeks on a sheep farm helping deliver lambs in this spring season in England. The other day she helped a lamb that was struggling to emerge from its mother’s smaller than normal birth canal. As she gently held and pulled it, while others held down the sheep, the lamb finally emerged, and my daughter cleared away its amniotic sac and held it as it took its first breath. Later she told me that bringing a new life into this world was one of the most amazing feelings she’s ever experienced.

And then, on another day, a newborn lamb died while she was holding it, a stark reminder that with life comes death—and a reminder of the bookends to our own lives.

Most of us are deeply moved by such scenes. The arrival of life as well as its departure are almost always occasions for great emotional experience. There are no words that can do justice to a newborn baby, or a litter of puppies, or the death of a loved one. The same goes for the many OMG moments we all have that seem to come out of nowhere but are deep prompts about our lives and what ultimately matters to us. Deep feelings of coherence, belonging, and celebration or sadness usually accompany these experiences. They are moments of wonder and solemnity that move us in ways that reason and explanation cannot. Our lives can be transformed in these moments when we heed their message.

But the truth is that we are alive and experiencing this wonder every second. Our bodies are pumping blood, our immune systems are keeping us healthy, our arms and legs and fingers are toes are working to help sustain and move us. Our brains and senses are alive with touch, sight, smell, sound, taste, and thought. This experience of simply being alive and experiencing the wonder of life is there for us to appreciate every second of every day if we just pay attention to it.

At least 90% of the energy we expend every day is simply to keep us alive and healthy! Yet many of us don’t focus on this aspect of life. Instead, we dwell on the 10% of the seeming importance of staying busy, or of distraction and novelty, and we miss the sheer joy of living until it’s too late. My focus of life these days is as much about being as doing.

How can you bring more of the joy of appreciating life into every day? For me it works best to focus on my health and my being. In the overall arc of my life and my dedication to being a vital and present dad to my daughters, not much else matters but the steady presence of healthy life within me. It determines how I experience the world around me, who I care about, how I treat others, and what I am inclined to do. It sometimes works best when I am doing nothing or have acres of time to accomplish something, feeling unpressured and timeless and able to focus and concentrate as if time didn’t exist.

Meditation is another way. The stillness and steadiness of meditation rhythm, whether seated or slowly walking, sometimes with my mind empty and sometimes with thoughts coming in and out but not holding onto any of them, echoes the way the universe ebbs and flows, sometimes blurry and other times in focus. Bringing my attention to the steady in-and-out of my breathing is a good way to harmonize with this rhythm.

My health practice and writing are the ways the universe is expressing itself through me. Health is ultimately not what a doctor says but the power of the universe to keep me alive, a kind of cosmic power that expresses itself in all of us.

Yet the best way to be in synch with the spirit of life is to acknowledge it in your own being. Simply pay attention to your own life, check in with yourself. If you have trouble doing this, think of the alternative, of you not being alive, of missing out on the simple pleasures and the people you treasure. While this might be scary, there is nothing to fear from it. This chilling thought might kick-start you into doing more to protect your health.

Only you can answer these two questions: How long do you want to live your life? How do you want to live the rest of your life? Only you can fathom how deeply and authentically you are prepared to experience this one and only chance we each get at this incredible experience of being alive.