“Sometimes it’s the same moments that take your breath away that breathe purpose and love back into your life.” ~ Steve Maraboli

What if we approached each day with an irrepressible gratitude, unlike none we’ve ever felt before?

To embrace each instance with equanimity and grace, and with all the love this universe has to share?

To behold the miracle of life, with a curiosity that shines with the brilliance of one million stars…?

And, to hold each human heart as a most delicate flower, which has so generously shared it’s bloom into the last of the summer’s hours?

My dears, then…what might our moments be?

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,— act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.