Imagine you've lived to a ripe old age and you're thinking about your life, your children, your friends.  You remember the good with gratitude and the less than good with grace.  You think "wouldn't it be a blessing to snap my fingers and go back and relive the moments with deeper appreciation, less worry, a greater sense of what matters, live them with wonder and joy. 

In a dream that night...your last night alive...an angel comes to you and tells you that what you wanted will be granted, that you will be given a chance to live a certain part of your life over again.  You will be given the time from a certain moment until your death to live again.  Your heart leaps for joy!  The angel, however, tells you that you won't know you've lived those moments, that time, before.  You wont remember the dream or the gift of this unusual opportunity. Still you say "yes, please yes!" And just as suddenly, you wake up.  You sense something has happened, but you're not sure what.  You're much younger than you had been, though you don't know it.  You get up and find a pile of bills on the table, your spouse looks at you and tells you to do something you're expected to get done that day, your children are fighting in the other room, the neighbor's dog is barking non-stop. You've got a mild headache.  Still, something tells you that today is a gift. 

Who's to say this hasn't happened? If it has, how might you live from now on?  And if it hasn't, why would you not live that way anyway?  

© Stephen Carl