Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. ~ George Bernard Shaw

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WHAT'S LIFE WITHOUT LIVING?

WHAT'S LIFE WITHOUT LIVING?

posted by Dave Dame date-icon March 08, 2015

Most people count you out when you are born in the 70s with a perceived short life expectancy and physical limitations. This motivates you to exceed those expectations. My life was focused to being able to wake up another day, establishing myself professionally, and/or meeting the next goal or challenge I set for myself. Life was focused on proving them wrong.

I have fought hard to overcome daily pains and logistical challenges to continue to get up each day. Pushing myself to achieve professional goals and helping enterprise organizations change to optimize delivering high value to customers and their market space. Putting in a ton of hours to exercise to get the most that I can from my body, being able to walk and be more mobile. I put all this work in to have a life.

However, I was not leaving anytime to use this life to live. To live to experience new things. To live for seeing and feeling things that I did not know even existed.

Life will happen, Living it has to be deliberate.

For the first time ever my bare feet felt the sand of the beech. It was as if I was stepping on a fluffy cloud. I have never felt such an unusual, awesome feeling before with my feet. It was warm and the sand hugged my feet as I walked along the beach with my wife at my side.

I snorkelled for the very first time and got to see the most beautiful tropical fish with vibrant colours that cannot be described. The water was the most beautiful blue I have ever seen. The fish swam all around me. I felt such a freedom. I did not have to fight gravity, I was simply free. Like floating in a beautiful new world, so peaceful, so tranquil.

My wife and I have worked very hard at being a couple, excelling at work, and doing a number of community activities supporting various causes. Time was flying past us, before we knew it, 5 years had gone by since we last went away somewhere outside of Canada, ten years since we had went outside of Canada just the two of us.

This made me realize that I need to balance life with living. I’m still going to push myself both personally and professionally, but I need to take the time and reap the benefits of life by living and experiencing these moments. I need to take advantage of this while I’m blessed to have the mobility I do and my wife s able to join and assist me with us experiencing living.

Walking barefoot in the sand and snorkelling for the first time might not seem like a big deal to most, but for me it was something that I would have never dreamed of.

I’m always in awe of the awesomeness of people. During our vacation we met awesome peeps that made the above experiences possible. We always see on TV and read about the people that suck. However, the people that go above & beyond are rarely mentioned or noted as the exception. The last two years I have seen mostly the awesomeness of the human race, making the people that suck the exception.

Continue to push yourself. Continue to achieve. Remember to live for the moment, live for the experience, live for the memories, live while you can enjoy the most...simply live!

Losing a close friend this year taught me that we all have a finite amount of time...living is more than putting in time.