Just Another Day?

A Bridgewater Sunrise.

As the sun rose in the east today, just outside the window from my writing desk, I marveled at how often I take for granted – as I suspect many of us do – that we will be around to see it rise tomorrow, the day after that, the following day, and for an endless string of sunrises and sunsets  . . . 
 
. . . and that we will be able to enjoy another day of work; of studying; of being loving parents; of admiring the progress of our children and grandkids; of rejoicing with friends and relatives who are close to us; or of merely engaging in all of the other myriad activities of life. 
 
But there is no guarantee that what we are pursuing now will see the dawn of tomorrow.  There never was.  There never will be.  Fate can intervene at any time for any one of us, no matter how rich or how poor, how healthy we may be at the moment, or how much absolute control we think we have over our individual destinies in life.

 
These thoughts are not intended as an admonition, but simply as a reflection on how randomly fate deals out the cards of life; and of how, despite what we may think, there is no alternative but to deal with the ones in our hands at the moment.
 
Some of us will get a long streak of winning circumstances in life – admittedly many of them will be of our own making.  I hope that this is the good fortune of those who are reading these words.  But others are not so lucky. 
 
As 2011 draws to a close, it may not be such a bad idea to consider the possibility of enhancing the quality of our activities between each of our sunrises and sunsets – not in a frenzied, pointless way, but in a manner that provides an enriched quality of life for ourselves and for those who surround us daily, as well as for others with whom we come in serendipitous contact in our quotidian endeavors.
 
Dare to think that this is possible, even in this high-pitched New Jersey neighborhood.  Don’t let tomorrow be just another day.
 
Thanks for reading.  May you savor your sunrises.