LIVING AND LOVING ARE THE GOALS OF A SUCCESSFUL LIFE

I am thankful that there are second chances in life. I spent my first life chasing money and other useless objects of the world. I wasn’t a bad person; I just bought into what I thought life was about. I worked too hard, drank too much, traveled to distant lands, experienced everything life had to offer, and then crashed at the age of thirty-seven.

It’s kind of a long story, but it was at the worst part of the oil industry crash and I compare it to the worst stock market crash since 1929 — October of 1987. I went through a bitter divorce, was arrested in Angola, made it back to America, eventually was released from the hospital, and lived on the streets for almost two years. Now, I can get to the second chances.

It took a while to recover from the injuries and surgeries. Along the way, I was in pain, starving, and had to make some decisions about what was important in life. I like the answers I found.

Success has nothing to do with money. Power is to be used well, and has nothing to do with position; it is from within that we have power over our lives and others, so use it well. Peace, love, joy, and happiness are found on the journey, not in the arriving.

I now live in New Mexico, have a very successful sports therapy practice, two fictional novels in publication, several yet-to-be-published novels, and I write short stories for amazon.com. I live every day to the fullest, as if it is my last day. If I’m resting, I rest with relish. If I’m working, I work with relish, and I usually balance the two pretty well; but it was a difficult lesson to learn.

Many people have the chance to do everything better the second time around, but many lose that chance by not recognizing it. Squandering life is the sin, not the stuff we call sin, like lust and sloth. They are manifestations of the squandering of life on shallow desires or poor choices.

Living and loving are the goals of a successful life, and how hard can that be? It must be hard, since we seldom do it. We rush so much we don’t have time to live. We work so hard that we don’t accomplish anything. There are infinite second chances in life, but we have to take the chance — love the moment and live life to know who we are, what we are, and accept it, nurture it, relish it, and let it grow and blossom into the glory of life and love. Try it today or tomorrow, and see if life doesn’t change for you.

I lost my sense of humor when I was living on the street, and when I realized it, I went into a used book store and bought a really bad joke book. It cost me the price of two cups of coffee, my next two day’s rations, but it was worth it. It took a while to begin to laugh, but when it cracked, it gushed. I found the worst jokes, ever, the funniest things in the world. I began to heal from my wounds that day. In a few days, I had a job, a real job, and from there, there was no holding me back.

I didn’t say it was easy, but it’s not as difficult to recover as we want to think. It takes a lot of love and a lot of living to get there.

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This article contributed by Will Kester – a writer at Helium.com