FOOD FOR THOUGHT

by: Chita Dela Cruz-Heap

The Time Is Now

Allow me to present you with a riddle. Imagine for a moment that you enter a supermarket where you buy three items- a jar of honey, a bottle of wine, and a dozen eggs. You go to the check out where you pay for the goods, the sales assistant puts the goods in a carrier bag, and you walk out of a building with all these items in your hand. Which of these items is the most valuable?

Take a moment to consider. Is it the honey, which is known to have healing properties, and which is sweet and delicious to the taste? Is it the wine, which you can serve to your friends to make them a little bit merry? Or is it the eggs, which are full of protein and which can be prepared in so many different ways? Man cannot after all live by bread alone.

If you have selected any one of these items then you would be wrong, because the answer is the ‘carrier bag.’ For should the carrier bag break you would lose all of the other items which would shatter upon impact with the floor.

But herein lies the dilemma, for you do not pay for the carrier bag, on the way home you are not thinking about the carrier bag- but about when you will open the honey, to whom you will offer the wine, and how you will cook the eggs. And when you get home you will throw the bag into your waste been without a second thought. So how do you actually value the carrier bag?

Now let us move on, and ask yourself this question. Which has the greatest value, your relationship, your job, your house- or your life? The answer has to be your life because without your life you would be unable to enjoy any of these other things. But how do you value your life?

The truth is that every single breath that we breathe is precious beyond measure, because on that one single breath all other things depend. But have we really come to understand this? Have we learned how to feel gratitude for each and every breath as it happens? Do we wake up each morning to marvel at this incredible gift of life with which each of us has been blessed? Or do we look at our watch and say “Oh no, it’s eight o’clock, I’m late!”

What will it take for us to truly appreciate the value of our breath? Will it take until the very last moment, as we slowly slip away from life, for us to realize that what is and what has always been the most important thing in our life is our life- but we need to appreciate this now.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Empty handed we came into this life, and empty handed we shall leave- but in the meanwhile we are alive, and as such we have the opportunity to fill our hearts to overflowing with a treasure that is beyond measure, and to feel that simple gratitude for life with which no other feeling can compare.

This is our time, and there is a party going on inside. It is time to wake up, time to truly enjoy this life, and time to feel that gratitude for which our hearts truly long./TE