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Joe used to make me laugh. When he suddenly died life wasn’t quite so funny.

As I was leaving my Pilates class today, a friend and I started to talk about life. We were sharing how much we love the Sunday Pilate’s class that Lois teaches and how motivated we felt after class. Lois is not only a good teacher; she has what we call, “a great soul.” Life is important to her.

My friend said she felt she had an “obligation to be positive and enjoy life.” I laughed and said, “That sounds like another job and I don’t know if I want one.” We laughed and she went further.

“I think about the present and don’t go to the future. This way, I always invest in whatever the moment brings. I want my children to understand how important the present is. “What do you think?” she asked. Is it important to live in the present?

First I shared the story about my next door neighbor who was absent at our “porch” get together last night.  When someone asked where he was, his wife said he was sulking because he had a birthday the next day.  Apparently he had a melt down and went to bed.  I thought, is that a luxury or a disease? Why do adults get depressed on their birthdays? Kids don’t.

(Wow, what a great conversation we are having in the “Y” parking lot. This will make today worth remembering. )

I, like many, often fight to live in the present. It’s easy to think ahead to next week; friends I’m going to see or my Sunday Pilates class.  If you reflect on it, today is the day you looked forward to last week. I told her if I don’t stay with today, it has very little meaning. It’s like devaluing the day, and I forget to put my effort into enjoying the day and making it wonderful. When we don’t look forward to something—when we don’t enjoy it—we aren’t very present in that current moment. It’s like life is just passing by, and we’re just waiting for it to pass so we can get on with the more fun or interesting parts of each day. Isn’t it a terrible way to use up a precious day?

We all know what it’s like to lose someone we love or something that was important to us. If we invest in the present, we will know we’ve loved the best we can and something great is bound to come out of it. We just have to make it happen.

It doesn’t matter how simple or magnificent the day is; it may be just enjoying the rain.

If we’re lucky, today will come so why not make it the best day ever? When you think about it, life is just a series of experiences linked together by our thoughts about them. Like a string of pearls, they surround our being.

Let’s focus on having them free rather than strangle us. Okay, she did say let’s go kayaking after one of our classes. Just having the conversation was good; we do need things to look forward too.

If you do the best you can for today, you’ll never be disappointed in yourself. Need some cheering up? Check out  my book, “Birds Don’t Get Stuck in Flypaper.”