How many of us go through our lives unhappy or fearful?

Whether it is the price of material goods, taxes, work, family, friends, or relationships, we often feel that the universe conspires to make us unhappy or treat us unfairly.

We feel the world is not a loving place.

We feel like victims. We do not feel powerful or safe.

We often then try to control the things in our lives to give us a sense of order, but this approach limits our experiences, dreams and the quality of our lives.

How do we change this mindset of scarcity, victimhood, despair and fear to one of abundance, powerful creation, love and safety?

We change our mindset and slow down our thoughts.

This is how mindfulness and mediation assists.

Slowing down the mind and listening to the intuition of our hearts.

From thinking to feeling. From ego to soul. Synching with the rhythm of our lives.

Trusting and flowing. Living our lives with gratitude.

Appreciating each moment like it is our last.

Savoring every experience. Appreciating every miracle.

There is no promise for tomorrow. Only today. Only NOW.

From my medical experience as a critical care physician, I have been with many people with precious little time left in this world.

Many of these people had wealth, power and position in their life.

To a person they would give up all the material trappings for one more walk outside, one more dinner with their family, or one more time with their children or grandchildren.

As our egos get stripped away from our identity, each experience becomes richer. Little things.

Like TS Eliot said, “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all of our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

We have the opportunity for wonder, awe and joy each day in our experience. We have the opportunity to live heaven on earth.

Most of us are oblivious.

The trees and flowers undergoing rebirth of the spring. The sun on our backs. The breeze on our face. The flight of a bird. The love of our pets. The joy of our spouse, our children, our family. A beautiful song. A great meal. Great conversation.

Being grateful for each miracle in our life begins the journey to gratitude.

Once we see what is really important and what true wealth is, then we are on our road not only to hope and happiness, but to living longer.

This is a choice that all of us have available.

Opening our eyes to see the beauty in our lives.

It is our choice to stop feeling like victims and embrace our power as creators.
Creating the people, places and experiences we want in our lives through conscious choice.
Our choice to trust that even feeling and seeing hate, fear and pain are opportunities to reconnect and appreciate their opposite – love, joy and safety.

For we often don’t appreciate feeling good until we feel bad. We don’t appreciate freedom until we are restricted. The duality of our lives.

Trust that every experience is an opportunity to address the fragmentation that is within each of us. An opportunity to become whole. To rise above duality.

We are all on the same river and moving to the same place.

And we are all creators, as is evidenced by the finding of wave-particle duality in quantum physics (a multi-potential wave collapses in a coherent particle when there is an observer or we take a multi-potential future state and make it a single current state by interacting with it).

Create the life you want to live. Start now. You are powerful. Embrace this reality and you will embrace health, hope and happiness.

Almost heaven.

Author(s)

  • Clay B. Marsh

    Chief Health Officer, West Virginia University

    Clay B. Marsh, MD, is West Virginia University’s chief health officer, and serves as a member of President E. Gordon Gee’s leadership team. As WVU’s vice president for health sciences, he oversees five health sciences schools and three health campuses.