Imagine yourself in the intensive care unit of your local hospital. Now imagine that the medical team, after a number of procedures, indicate to you that you are in critical condition and could die unless you give permission to try a number of other procedures to restore you to health. You are asked, “Do you want to live?”
In light of not knowing fully what “the other procedures” will be what do you reply? What does it mean when you say, “Yes, I want to live”? Perhaps in this “second chance” at living, that word is meant to take on a new meaning:
- maybe it is to focus on the possibilities for good in living life with more intentionality than you had before;
- maybe it is to truly appreciate all as gift and not as possession;
- tmaybe it is o more freely express gratitude for so much received from God, others, life;
- or perhaps it is to be more mindful of the power that resides within you by your very BE-ing to be a presence for positive change.
When I was faced with this question, I said “Yes, I want to live” and gave the medical team my assent to whatever needed to be done. They used all their expertise to help me move through this illness. After more than six months in hospital, I am home and continue to reflect on how my illness continues to speak wisdom to me. In that appreciation, I am finding the need to meet old familiar challenges in new ways, and to dream new possibilities for really living.
“To dream the impossible dream” was illustrated very vividly to me when I attended the Stratford performance of the Man of La Mancha. At one point in the performance Don Quixote says, "Take a deep breath of life, and consider how it should be lived".
May we all learn to take a deep BREATH of LIFE and consider how it should be lived, and in taking that deep breath, be grateful for the ability to inhale it and return it to the universe for more life to the whole.
I was faced with the question, “Do I want to live?” Although I felt spiritually ready to die, there was something in me that said, YES I want to live. What would YOU say and why?
Kathleen Lichti, CSJ