How I Celebrate Life 3

How I Celebrate Life To celebrate has many definitions in the dictionary, but to extol or to glorify seems to be as close as I can come to a definition of living a celebration.

I enjoy the beauty found in this world. I pick a rose, look at its beauty, smell its fragrance. I bring it in the house. I show it to my husband, let him smell the fragrance.

I place it in a vase and put it in the bathroom to enjoy.

I have a special CD that I enjoy. It is called “Martha Stewart Sunday Brunch.” I enjoy listening to the beautiful classical music on that CD. I can enjoy it in the car when I am driving. I can enjoy it when I am eating supper in the dining room. I can enjoy it anytime, working or resting. I have other classical music but this CD is especially lovely.

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I love to set the table with beautiful dishes and some centerpiece. It doesn’t have to be expensive. I use family pieces; but I also enjoy some dishes I found at garage sales or a thrift store. I raise my own flowers and still enjoy drying them and making dried arrangements. I like just fresh flowers in my house when I can have them.

I enjoy watching people respond to something they enjoy. If I see someone having pleasure, it gives me pleasure.

This is especially noticeable when I sing or act; but, it can happen almost anytime, anywhere. I enjoy seeing my husband enjoy life. I especially love to hear him laugh or joke.

I enjoy creating good quality food for my husband and myself and anyone else that I happen to share it with.

I enjoy watching plants emerge from the seeds that I plant. I love to walk out in my garden in the spring or any time of the year, and investigate.

“Have the seeds broken through the ground yet?”

When I was younger, I did not get that pleasure.

It was such a lot of hard work raising the food and preserving the food, that I didn’t have the time to appreciate such small pleasures. I do today.

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I love feeling water flow over my face when I take a shower. I love a soak in the tub with beautiful music playing on my tape recorder. I love the feel of warm water flowing over my body when I swim in a warm swimming pool.

I enjoy singing songs to records, CD’s, radio and television, especially songs from musicals. I enjoy playing the piano or organ and singing in my home, especially when my husband is there to listen and enjoy it too.

I enjoy dancing, feeling the rhythm. Waltzing with my husband or waltzing with arm movements in “line dancing” by myself are the most enjoyable.

My children would say, “I get into the music.” I like to express myself this way.

The big question for me is not how to celebrate life; but when can one celebrate life. If one lives with pain and doesn't get adequate sleep, it is very difficult to celebrate life. If I can only find one thing to enjoy and thus celebrate life during these painful periods I feel I have succeeded in my efforts.

Sometimes that is very difficult to do. That is also a way of celebrating life. To put forth the effort despite life’s obstacles is a celebration. There are many good and enjoyable things in living. To keep going when it isn't totally enjoyable is also a celebration of the value and goodness in living.

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I try to be grateful each day for my many blessings. They are gifts to be enjoyed. I can even see a need for suffering at times. Sometimes that is the way to help a person. So in that way, I am grateful for suffering, not that I enjoy it. I cannot see the need for all suffering so I have to have faith that it is still God’s world. I am here for just a speck of eternity and will continue to try to do what I understand to be his will.

I am grateful to learn. Sometimes it is with pleasure, sometimes it is with displeasure. But I still choose to learn.

I am grateful for the opportunity to live in this world and have the health that I have. But I realize that I must do my part to make good choices for myself.

I am grateful to have the health and opportunity to be busy so that I can enjoy life each day in some small way.

Life has a way of giving us experiences that we may not want, and I am not so naĂŻve to not understand that more difficult times lie ahead of me. Old age is a challenge for everyone. I guess I will try to celebrate what I can do, like the examples I see before me, instead of dwelling on what I cannot do. I can only try to find some way to celebrate each day.

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