[using rather than pausing life]

I lied about totally quitting this. The past month was a little chaotic, though, with finals, helping one of my best friends with her wedding prep and day and spending more time with graduating and visiting friends, but now I'm home and finally feel like I have a chance to breathe. In a lot of ways, I feel like that's the story of my life though. It always seems to move faster than I can keep up, and I hate that I'm constantly running out of time, especially now that everyone is starting to go their seperate ways. If life was a movie, I'd push pause and/or rewind right about now.

Yet I can't help feeling more blessed than sad because I think change is a refreshing part of life that should also be embraced. Saying goodbye to what was is a great reminder of how blessed I am to have all the memories, stories and friendships, and looking forward to what is to come is an exciting adventure. If we can't freeze time then why try you know? It's a convicting reminder for me to slow down and appreciate my blessings rather than wishing for more of them too.

I mean, I've always had this theory that life would be grand if we didn't have to sleep. You see, if you actually get eight hours a day, that means you spend one-third of your day, and in turn your life, asleep! Now if only we had a magic pill that would give us all the benefits of sleep without us actually having to go to sleep, just think of how much more we could experience. I've got lots of goals and things I want to do and people I want to keep up with, but I'm always running out of time for everything and everyone. No sleep would make those things possible.

However, I also realize that if we never slept, we'd probably still fill up every hour and run out of time. It's like the more you have of something the more you waste - time, space, money. You name it. We Americans are famous for wasting it. But when you're only given so much, you value it more. You use it more fully. And I think that fact alone is what makes something truly a blessing.

So as I sit here disliking the fact that life is constantly moving forward much faster than I want in some ways, I also realize that the blessing of life and time isn't as much about the amount we're given or how fast it moves but what we do with it. We can't push pause, but we can enjoy every moment along the way. As Samuel Johnson once said, "Life, like every other blessing, derives its value from its use alone."