Thought for today:
"Some people behave like drama queens. They first overreact to something they don't like and after making a great fuss and palaver, they resume their more normal 'on edge' disposition, at the ready to flare up again at the next small spark of disagreement.
In short, they like to make storms in a teacup and then complain about getting splashed (mad). They are their own worst enemies and yet, this type of behaviour isn't confined to nasty people alone. I know many a good person who cannot seem to exist unless they are at the centre of a perpetual crisis; usually one of their own making or design. There will always be a problem in their life or on the horizon because the maelstrom of their mind will always look for one!
I recall hearing of a couple of long-term elderly residents in an Old Folk's Home. Neither of the two had spoken to one another for many years, yet they daily entered into battle; talking about each other disparagingly to other residents and overall pulling the other person down. Despite this long silence of over a decade's duration, neither could remember what had been the cause of their original fall out. Their daily disagreeable discourse continued to be carried out for a full fourteen years and only stopped when one of the two male residents died in their sleep, aged ninety-two.
I was told that while no apparent remorse was initially expressed by the surviving protagonist, he nevertheless entered into a permanent state of bereavement after the funeral until he also died some three weeks later. It was thought that the death of one had taken away the life purpose of the other.
Life is too short and is far too sweet to waste in quarrelsome mood and cantankerous mind. Life is for living and enjoying to the full. Few of us truly appreciate this great gift we have when we wake up on a morning to face the day ahead. We think we do, we say we do, but we truly don't until death stares us in the face. It one of mankind's greatest ironies that we never fully appreciate what we have until we don't have it anymore.
The loudest wake-up call I ever got was to be told that I had a terminal illness over four years ago; and yet it is one of the best things that ever happened to me. I know that most of you reading this post will consider me as somebody who has flipped his lid; a man living in cloud cuckoo land, but you could not be more wrong!
Whilst, during that four years I have continued to breathe, I have been able to experience every second as a 'precious moment'. Healthy people with normal life-expectancy experience each second, minute, hour, day, week, month, year they breathe as being 'a second: a minute, an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year', (some good, some fair, and some bad); whereas every second I continue to live and breathe, I experience as being 'precious'. It is as though God has turned the world upside down by giving me a quality of life and appreciation that normal healthy folk can never know.
It's a wonderful world that God gave us. Have a good day out there." William Forde: March 29th, 2018.
