Who promised you tomorrow?

I'm in the kitchen this morning making coconut flower pancakes (So Delicious!) and I'm listening to my latest podcast obsession - Oprah's Super Soul Conversations - when I literally busted out laughing scaring my dog in the process and spilling batter on my shirt that I didn't notice until hours later. The speaker on the show, Wes Moore, a New York Times bestselling author and decorated U.S. Army veteran, was talking about our collective belief that we think we have all the time in the world to get to our projects and dreams. Most of us sit around dreaming about all the things we want to accomplish in our life, but are we actually doing anything to get there? Maybe you're the kind of person who makes plans months or years ahead of time thinking 'I will have time to do that later.' Well... not so fast. Here's an excerpt of the live appearance Wes Moore gave at UCLA's Royce Hall that changed my outlook on aspirations - hopefully for good - in a very lighthearted but poignant way.

"...When it's time for you to leave this planet make sure that it mattered that you were ever even here because none of us are promised anything. We're not promised more days or more weeks or more years. Nobody's tapped me on the shoulder and said, 'You know what Wes, you've got 6,515 days left so you can pace yourself.' When you see people like:

Yeah I'm a get to that once I get promoted

I'm a get to that once I get tenure

I'm a get to that once I retire

I'm a get to that once my kids move out

Who's promised you anything?

The only thing we know, is that while we're here, let's actually do something with it."

Can you imagine being told you have X amount of days left on this Earth so you better do what you're going to do now before it's too late and you head to your grave with regret? The very thought of knowing this information would scare so many people into swallowing their fear and jumping head first into the one thing they've been avoiding their whole lives. It would be INSANITY. But at least - for once - people would be who they were always meant to be. Life doesn't like certainty though, in fact, the more spontaneous the better. Which is why control freaks like I used to be (at least I like to think of it as a past tense, probably more a recovering control freak right now) get stuck in thinking "Why me? How could this happen to me? Did you really think you were above heart break, betrayal, disappointment or even death? Hate to break it to you, but we ALL go through it.

"To the people who are in despair... I would tell them... You locked in on something that didn't belong to you. Someone that didn't belong to you. You didn't let go of a yesterday that didn't belong to you... You did not lose your purpose. What you lost was the sense that you thought certain things shouldn't happen to you and they did. As if you were excluded from the ordinary everyday things of life and you can't get over it." - Caroline Myss in The Path Made Clear.

The good news is: Accepting that we are above no one in this life and embracing the calling that we all have in our hearts is what will get us through this challenging, frustrating and blindingly beautiful life we were given. Don't waste it. If you feel like painting, paint. If you feel like dancing, dance. If you feel like singing, sing. Be you. Let the world see you for who you were always meant to be. You think the world can't see beyond the mask you wear to cover up the hurt and pain of your past or present, but they do. We just don't talk about it. I want to let you know it's ok to talk about it. In fact, it's liberating. When you finally let someone see you, really see you, it feels like you're lit up from the inside and no matter what happens, nothing can dull your inner sparkle.

Taken in my backyard - Clarissa's Garden