Is Your Life's Glass Half Empty or Full?

So how do you see life? Is your glass half empty or half full? You see, I think this is the most basic yet key points that has lead me to this place. A place where I am ready to embrace all that is peaceful, craving if you will, to establish and maintain a sense of personal balance.

Over the Christmas holidays I had the opportunity to take in, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons, staring Brad Pitt and Kate Blanchett. An incredibly long film, more of a chick flick and surely a disappointment for those (unlike me) in search of some faced paced, high energy action flick. A story about a young man who ages in reverse. Born with a body, internal organs, joints, etc of a nearing 80 year old, young Benjamin is not given a very promising prognosis in terms of longevity.

His mother succumbing to the complications associated with childbirth set in a time of about a half century ago, Benjamin's father cannot bare the reminder of his lost love and abandons the acutely ill infant on the steps of a home for the aging and infirm. Embraced most lovingly by a tragically infertile woman, so begins the unique tale of Benjamin Buttons as written by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Having turned seven, yet appearing a dwarfish seventy something year old, Ben learns early on the fact that we all must one day die. That "losing people is a must." He is told. "For how else would we know how important they were, if we didn't?" Thus a turning point in my own life, I think. Loss...yes, it is something all of us either have or will experience at some point in our lives. The degree in which the pain is felt, I suppose is dependent upon the role that person may have held in our lives. A parent or sibling, to niece or nephew as compared to a grandparent, close friend, spouse or one's own child....the degree and sense of loss as unique as the very relationship between any two persons. That with each loss, I think comes the
undeniable fact that we must at some point as well face our own mortality. With a little luck on our side, hopefully its still a long time away.

In any event, seeing as death comes to us all, eventually, wouldn't life be better spent, enjoying it? Cherishing all that is good and joyful and choosing to let the negative slip quickly through our finger tips without a second thought? Last year, my maternal grandmother passed suddenly. She was 82. Having enjoyed the company of much of her family the day before. Loads of laughter, good food and an endless parade of grand and great grand-children surrounding her, she sure would have been in her glory. The thing with Nona sadly wasn't the fact that she had been widowed almost forty years earlier. No the sad thing was that for all the love and happiness that was always within her grasp, she lived life as though shed swallowed a
rather large, hockey puck sized, bitter pill. Often frowning, negative and harsh in tone, there had seldom been a day when she hadn't spent much of it complaining, yelling, and arguing with her daughter as well as a select group of additional targets. That somehow in life for all that she had to be happy and thankful for, it were the moments of sorrow that she seemed to focus her energies on.

Much like a woman I used to know. That no matter the occasion, how happy or important something may have been to her acquaintances, friends, spouse, family and even her own children, this bitter woman could not smile. I am really convinced that this was the sad and true reality that physically her face was etched into a permanent frown....still is actually.

Well, life is too short. At forty something, I think I have finally come to realize this and refuse to
spend even one more second dwelling on the down side of life. That the world is what it is. That as merely a short, truly brief guest here, I feel that looking for the simplest beauty each day, is time well spent. A hug from our children, a smile from a friend, a light peck from someone we admire and having the ability and then desire to perform or accept a random act of kindness.
Isn't that more important than to be lying on one's death bed, hopefully years from now, regretting all the missed opportunities to fill another's heart with happiness and love and in return feel our own bubbling with the same? To know that you lived life fully. That it was a road well travelled, touch the lives of many in a positive and kind manner....isn't
that how you wish to be remembered? That your life...your hopes, dreams and goals....that all was lived with great passion and vigor and that you did it peaking through a half Full glass?

Have a wonderful day:)