I see my life as a gift, I see my health as a gift. Some of my family and all of my friends are gifts. Sometimes strangers are gifts.

there were times I did not think life was worth living and the only thing that kept me going was knowing if I gave up my life-others such as nieces other relatives and friends might take the “easy’ way out because I couldn’t get a toe hold and regain my will to live. Their lives were worth living but I stayed alive just so they “knew that” I know this is crazy talk but this was my reality

About 15 years ago I was having panic attacks so bad-my doctor had told me to leave my house every day or I would become so reclusive I would be stuck there. I was living in a city and I would walk from my house and could only walk as far down each road that I could still see my house. Forget driving–just walking 6 houses down from mine was totally overwhelming. One day I passed a very old woman who was walking with a walker—she had on a leather helmet so if she fell it wouldn’t crack her head so bad. She was tiny and frail. She was looking at flowers, then stop and look up a tree.

it was a defining moment in my life–I cannot explain what happen. I cannot tell you that I never feel down or have panic attacks. I can tell you-that in my mind she was an angel and gave me hope. Not because I felt sorry for her–she was living every moment of her life—I wasn’t. She wasn’t looking back to make sure her house was still there and she damn sure couldn’t run home like I could. I kept walking thinking about her and realized I hadn’t looked back to make sure my house was in sight.

I don’t know if this will make any sense–but I did need to think about it—so thanks for the nudge, Jack.

seaisland: a good story, how you realized that your fear on that walk was an option, not tied to reality. Meaning the danger was not there, only the fear.

Dear Jack:

I don’t see my life as a gift because if it was so, that means there is (yes…) a god doing the gift giving. If I believed so, and for the moment that I consider it, the same gift giver so often takes back his gifts, early! He gives the gift and he takes it away.
anita

thanks Jack
I guess you and I both were humbled by our walks. I want to learn more about walking meditation. Regardless moving puts me more in touch with getting into a good place than being still. Ever sense I saw the old lady I have been a walker. She was a gift. It was a gift for you to remind me of that low point and how far I have come. I still get down, but I have learned to use many tools to come back quicker.

Thanks Anita
I see people who help me as a gift–the encouraging word, the laugh, the example by doing. I see you take so much time to answer some very troubled people–who then turn around and complain to you about the same problem again, when you have already given them advise–that is so emotionally draining when my friends used to do it to me. I don’t know how you do it. A quality I just don’t have. Your patience/wisdom is a gift to them. I think you are a gift. I read Tiny Buddha awhile before I joined and I had an opinion about you in particularly before I joined. You did something with so much grace and courage it was instrumental of me joining. I want strengths I see in others to rub off on me.

A gift implies that something is given to me by someone else. Since I am the universe and the universe is me, calling my life a gift is undervaluing my own place. As if there is something else than me or bigger than me that’s giving me a position of privilege.

I do love this experience of life though. But using words like gifts, love, appreciation, gratitude are just semantics anyway when trying to describe your experience of life.

Where are you Jack? Haven’t seen you around lately. I miss you!

I can’t write poems like you do so I am going to adapt a poem (sorry about it being quite bloody if you take it literally:

Bring us Jack back; and, when he is back,

Take him and cut him out in little stars,

And he will make the face of heaven so fine

That all the world will be in love with night.

anita