Your One Wild and Precious Life

By Linda N Spencer

OVER a year ago, I moved to Europe. This past week, I spoke to one of my dear American friends to learn that she was moving to Europe as well.

She won't be living in the same country as me, but at least we'll be on the same continent. 

Are you leading a  'wild and precious life'?

Over the summer, I sent her a photo I took on the beach where we live in Costa del Sol.

It was a perfect picture with the Mediterranean Sea and the words from Mary Oliver, "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

I'm at that certain age when people typically start to evaluate what they've done in their lives. Decades have passed. Children have grown.

As I joked recently with a colleague and friend, this is the time when we start to gain wisdom only to have our bodies begin to fall apart. One begins to assess things.

When my friend told me she was moving to Europe, I was fabulously happy for her. I know that she came to a point in her life where she needed a fresh perspective and she wanted to make a bold choice.

We both had been speaking about it for years, when I lived in New York.

Many of my friends are at that stage in life where they're reflecting back on the path that brought them to a particular point in life.

While many are content, I do have some who want to break free from living in a particular city or country. I have others who want to leave a career after having done it for 20 years.

Still others know the time is coming when they have to re-evaluate if they stay with their spouse and partner. Not everything is meant to be forever.

While I'm happy that my friend will be living on the same continent as I am, and hence, we can hopefully see each other more often, I'm really more content in the fact that she is living a new dream.

What's more, I am delighted that she decided to strike out on the journey - not knowing whatsoever what the path ahead will bring.

It takes an infinite amount of courage and faith in the unknown to do what she's doing. In fact, I'm not sure I would have moved to Europe all by myself if I didn't have my husband.

I'd like to think I would have, but I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not.

But, here's the thing. None of us are promised tomorrow. We're not even promised the next moment in our lives.

Although we think we'll be here tomorrow, next month or ten years from now - there are absolutely no guarantees. The older I grow, the more absolutely precious every moment I'm here becomes.

I have a greater respect for the fragility and temporal joys of life now than I ever did in my 20s.

So, if you find yourself in that place where you're evaluating, here's some advice for you. Jump. Leave every excuse of why you can't or shouldn't.

Do the planning. Make the decision and do it. Life's absolutely too short. You'll never get today ever again. You'll never have this chance again if you don't take it. Don't wait for tomorrow. It may never come.

Yes, you'll have people in your life that will challenge you when say you want to move, finally divorce your partner or change your career.

But, here's what others who have danced to their own tune and I have learned. You'll always have those people. There's always a chorus predicting failure, drama and tragedy.

This has nothing to do with you. It's because they're expressing their own fears and anxieties.

In Mary Oliver's poem, the sentence before her most quoted line about your wild and precious life is this:

"Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?"

© 2015 Linda N. Spencer and "Living For Purpose". All rights reserved.

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