One of the saddest things in life is not realizing what treasures  you really have until they are gone. As human beings, we have the strange habit of always complaining about what we don’t have, instead of being grateful for what we already have. When our children are young, we think about how nice it would be to think about our needs. When they go off to college, we miss them and realize how much they mean to us. We have lots of time to see to our needs, but we long to hear the door slam and the sound of footsteps in the hall. We often take our spouses for granted, not realizing how much they enrich our lives and how much we depend on them for comfort and support. When they die, or there is a divorce and they no longer are there for us, we are left with grief and the little things that bothered us before, seem so insignificant compared to the loss of them in our lives.

Some of us are born with a few things that distinguish us from everyone else. Yet we often spend so much time trying to change our eye color with contact lens, or we dye our hair a different color or lose weight because we are dissatisfied with our looks. When we reach seventy, we yearn to have our old hair back, our old body back because being wrinkled and having sagging skin is not what we expected. When we are young and strong and full of vitality, we take our health for granted. We do risky activities. We think we are invincible and  we will live for ever. When the diagnosis of cancer or some other debilitating illness, robs us of our ability to do the things we use to do, we sadly realize that we were so blessed and so blind to the value of what we really had.

It is important now to take stock of the blessings in our lives. It is crucial to thank those people who have touched our lives in such significant ways. It is wise to take a look at our health and try to improve it any way we can. It is time to tell those that matter to us that we love them. For love is the greatest treasure of all.

Yu/stan/kema