Like Your First and Your Last

Let’s take a look at our everyday–our humdrum routine. What are its major components, the things that are most consistent? For most of us it probably goes something like this: “I wake up, I get ready, I have something to eat, I go to work, I come home, I eat something, I go to bed”. While there’s birthday parties and new Netflix series that fill that gaps of monotony from time to time this is the blueprint. How does your everyday make you feel? What are the activities that remain stable in your everyday? Are they fresh and exciting or is it just another day?

Just Another Day:

These three words will destroy a person’s mindset for the day before the day even begins. If life is “just another day’ than what is the point? Why bother with today when all will be the same tomorrow? Or, why enjoy today when up ahead I’ll reach a point or attain something new that will really bring joy to me and until that moment all will be the same anyway. Lived this and lived that.

Life this way is no fun and it is no good. We need to view each day with a different perspective if we’re going to make the most of a day and, in doing so, our life. So what shall this perspective be?

Living like it is your first and your last.

This is the inside out point of view crucial for living life fully and joyfully. We need to re-summon the original joy we felt in the discovery of what we now enjoy more frequently in life and stop taking for granted our gift of 24 hours. This is easy to do, let’s break it up into two simple steps to remember each morning as you start your day and each time you start each new activity in it.

Recalling our first

Let’s first visualize our very first time. Every last joyful second of it including the mystery of not knowing what is next. This can be the first of anything at all. Let’s start with something in our normal schedule. Let’s think back to our first day of work. At what time did you arrive? How did you prepare in the morning? What did you dress like? How did you interact with your co-workers and meet new people? How did you begin your work day? How were you feeling as you started your work? How did you feel as you continued and began to learn new parts of it? Were you opened to new ideas, new ways of doing things and strategies to try out?

Now, imagine going to work like this today. How different it might be from what we have now engrained in our “day to day” mode of seeing things. How excitingly different!

New and Unexpected

The above situation we have now brought to mind from our own lived experience represents for us the wonder of newness and the excitement of not knowing what comes next. Whether it is truly your first day of work or your 800th these two feeling are always true, we only fool ourselves when we think they’re not. No day is exactly the same as another. We can all reason with this I hope and by doing so we acknowledge therefore that each day is then a totally new day. Through its newness also comes unknowns. Since you have in fact never lived this day before in your life then you do not know what will happen in it and what it will bring. Our ego may fool us into thinking we know the future and can anticipate what’s to come but we don’t and even the most monotonous and what we feel are guaranteed parts of our life are always able to be mended or completely taken away. Therefore, put back on that wonder you had when it was your first time and also the excitement you felt not knowing all that is to come–this is living like your first and it is as valid and true as it was then as it is now in each new moment life brings to you.

Realizing our last.

Now comes the other truth. Just like this time is new and therefore unique, it can also be the last of its sort. With the excitement aforementioned, we never know what is to come next and so when any given situation will be the last of its kind altogether. The last time we eat this meal, see this person, go to this job, or enjoy the gift of life. These are all gifts and can be taken away from us at any time. This is no reason to dread–instead do them their fair justice by holding onto them while you can and enjoying them to the utmost potential. When we take things for granted we nullify their joy. Always receive each day in gratitude-for just like any event within it, it too can be our very last. Imagine if you knew this ahead of time. That something would be your last. How would this change your approach to it? Your enjoyment of it? Your presence in it? You’ve surely had some lasts before already, how did you handle these? Did you treat it as “just another day” or did you put an extra emphasis on it with a little more effort into fully realizing it and being completely in it moment by moment. If this too can be your last, if you can reason that possibility exists, then do the same now. Go all out and give it your all. Enjoy it fully and make it a time to remember. We always do remember our lasts.

 

A Reminder each day

Starting each day call upon the wonder of a new day and the joyful excitement of all its unknowns. Then take it on in gratitude fully appreciating it and delighting in it just as you would if you knew it could be your very last time to do so. When we do this there are no more “just another days” there are moments and each one of them is a treasure, one we’ll remember distinctly and take with us for the rest of our journey ahead.