To Live or Not to Live, That is the Question

It's funny how our life experiences can change how we see the world around us.  Earlier this year I found myself challenged by a friend to take the work I do on a daily basis and view it from the possible spiritual angles it presented.  At first I found myself thinking I'd try it, but not truly expecting it to impact my life in any significant way.  It would be a slight variation to the way I saw the world around me, but life would go on without any profound changes.

I'm still not entirely for sure what happened, but as I thought about the comparisons that had been made between the medical aspect of the heart and the world of work I had become so familiar with over eight years of nursing something happened.  I found myself looking at a world I was so familiar with through different eyes.  The things that had become routine for me began to take on an entirely different meaning. 

The interesting thing was that this thought process followed me to my position in Hospice which gave a new meaning to some of the ideas that were presented in this new field.  One of those was the idea of when you are facing death you learn to be aware of life and in doing so learn how to truly live.  Well, with the challenge still in my mind of looking for the spiritual application it brought a whole other meaning with it.

The thought I was left with is from a spiritual sense how much more spiritually aware would we become if we were to die to the world's idea of what life should be and what success is?  How much do we not live by attempting to live an ideal dictated by the status quo?  Is it possible that by striving for that ideal we exist rather than truly live as God intended us to?  What would happen if we were to allow ourselves to lose the idea of success that we have come to accept as "normal"?

For me I find that what began as a casual challenge has now become something I can't get away from.   It has changed the way I look at my everyday life and in doing so has changed me.  It has challenged me to evaluate what is important in life and in doing so how I live mine.