In The Doctors Chair: Marion’s Miles
I encourage and support people to live their best lives through optimising wellbeing, vitality and health span.
Sometimes, words find a way of sticking around in your head long after other words have simply floated away, especially when those words have meaning - inspired by great people & recent events.
This quote by the late Tina Turner is simply one of the best quotes I’ve ever come across.
‘People think my life has been tough, but I think it's been a wonderful journey. The older you get, the more you realise it's not what happened, it's how you deal with it.’
Last Sunday was a great day. A day to celebrate recovery of my colleague Dr. Marian Ryan, from serious illness. A day to give thanks. A day to raise valuable funds for a local cancer charity, the ‘Solas Centre.’ (More than 16,000 euros!)
Our team at the Rowe Creavin Medical Practice, along with some family/friends, came together in a really special way, to walk/run part/half/all of the local Viking Marathon. What an occasion, all forty five of us with a shared cause. As the African proverb says:
‘If you want to do fast go alone. If you want to go far go together.’
And what a party afterwards! I’ve never felt so proud of everyone I work with, of the community in Waterford where I work and live. It was really a quite special occasion.
To use a sporting analogy, life can be considered a match with two halves. The first half is so often suffused with chasing - grades at school, results in matches, jobs, careers, and the too often overly competitive carousel of life itself. Life can become an overly competitive race dominated by ego and survival of the fittest. The underlying assumption being that who we are is simply determined by what we have and what other people think about us.
And some people unfortunately spend their entire careers and lives living out this paradigm.
Confucius the Chinese philosopher once wrote that we all have two lives, and that your second life starts the day you realise you only have one life.
Because there is a second half to this match in life, with the dawning realisation that the real purpose of life is a life of purpose and contribution; that while we make a living from what we do,and that's ok - we make a life from what we give to others.
They say it’s so important to celebrate the moments in life, the little victories that become valued memories over time.
Sunday was one of those days for me, and the wonderful team of people that I share my ‘work life’ with. The ‘work family.’
You don't have to wait until the second half of life to start living and playing from a mindset of purpose and contribution. You don't need to have it all figured out to start living from an attitude of gratitude and service. Simply start now today, right here, right now by doing what you can with what you have. The prize is that your life becomes richer and more fulfilled as you reap the bountiful benefits of purpose and contribution.
Something to think about
Yours in wellbeing
Mark
