REVERB10: HALLELUJAH for ME—MYSELF—MY LIFE and YOURS!

I now, more than ever before, APPRECIATE that LIFE in all of its boisterous beauty and mystery is fleeting! Throughout 2010, I TRULY fell in LOVE with MY OWN ephemeral BEING. Challenged mightily by the deaths of 3 friends and confronted by my own health scare, I was thrust to my knees in humble submission: LIFE is TEMPORARY.

REALLY grasping LIFE’s transience has pushed me into DAILY—perhaps even momentous—CELEBRATIONS of each minute that is born, lives, and dies.

Today’s REVERB10 CHALLENGE prompt is: Appreciate. What is one thing you have come to appreciate most in the past year. How do you express gratitude for it?

MY CELEBRATIONS of GRATITUDE include:

LAUGHTER—I LAUGH as frequently as possible and engage other people in this laughing endeavor. HOOTING and HAWING boosts the immune system, wakes us up and makes us fully alive. I am a certified laughter yoga leader, so I know! (Learn more about laughter yoga.) Experiencing joy is a form of expressing gratitude!

IMPROVISATION—In the absence of SOMETHING, I pretend! Thank you Lesly Fredman for being IMPROV TEACHER extraordinaire. Learning to “make things up” has become a magnificent way for me to draw forth ideas and images which are draped in the great mystery of my mind and spirit!

DECLARING MEANING—I MATTER and so DO YOU! No proof required!

ELIMINATING the NEGATIVE—BEING EPHEMERAL does not allow time to criticize, mourn, or grasp onto that which submerges us in despair! The GOOD SHIP GRATITUDE does not have room for BLAH BLAH BLAH!

LOVING—I have learned to LOVE now. Tomorrow may be too late! I can’t count on anyone BEING here even in the next moment.

ACTING—I am doing what I can do—NOW. Living a life of GRATITUDE is DOING what IS possible today, this moment.

I will conclude today’s REVERB10 with a quote from George Bernard Shaw (Man and Superman, a dedicatory letter) that we read at every Artist Conference Network meeting:

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no “brief candle” to me. It is sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of fro the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.