Yesterday morning as my friend, Victoria and I were walking downtown she was sharing with me how she just does not like orange daylilies. She has a clump of them in the garden along the back of her house. But she does not like them because they bloom and last for one day, then the next day they already begin to wither and brown.
I thought about what she said and then related it to life. I said, “I’ll bet even though it only blooms for one day it makes sure to enjoy that one day to the fullest.”
It had me also recalling a funeral I went to years and years ago for a young person who was only in their teens when they died. I remember the minister having two people stand on either side at the front of the church. They were holding a string, each holding an end. The minister walked up to the string and with his fingers about half inch apart he told us that this is what it looks like in the amount of time we are really here on earth. The remainder of the very long string is eternity. The message was that life is so very short. Just a blip in time. Enjoy it to the fullest.
After breakfast as we walked around town perusing the sidewalk sales, we ran into a mutual friend we had just been talking about earlier, wondering how she was doing.
We sat for about an hour outside a shop on a bench and got caught up the best we could with the three of us and just in the span of an hour. But it was the most enriching hour!
I relayed what I said about the daylily living life to the fullest. Our friend then shared with us something she recently read from a spiritual teacher (not recalling the name right now). But the teacher saying that the way to live each day is that at the end of the day if you have no regrets, and you enjoyed it to the fullest, that when you closed your eyes if you didn’t awake again that you would be okay with that – that you lived that day doing what made you happy.
I thought about these conversations as I lay in bed last night before drifting off to sleep. I truly had the best time with my friend, Victoria celebrating our birthdays, feeling especially happy about our time together. Though there is so much of life I wish to live yet, I felt that if I didn’t awake today, I would have left this world a happy lady.
I think every time I now see an orange daylily I shall recall my time with Victoria, as well as, bumping into our mutual friend, who shared some beautiful wisdom with us. Though the daylily only blooms in full, rich, brilliant orange for a day, the message they carry will always be my reminder to enjoy the present moment. It’s all we have.