The important things in life

What's important in life? Is it money? Is it material things? Is it a series of letters behind your name? Or is it something more substantial?

I spent a lot of time assessing and reassessing what's important in my life, and these are some of the things that I've come up with as being important to me:


Love. In all regards. Most importantly, loving myself for who I am, in all my quirkiness and imperfections. It's so easy to lose sight of myself and start focusing on all my flaws. It's really really important to for me to love me.
Love comes in a variety of forms as well, from the love between friends, family, romantic love, and even the love between owner/pet.
I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have a family that loves me and supports me, and that I can also return the love and support to them. The same goes for my friends, whom I love so very dearly and who I know love me just as much. I'd have to say that love, for me is incredibly high, if not the highest item on my list of what's important in life.

Next on the list is having a good work ethic. I believe in working hard for what I get in life. I have always worked hard to get where I want to be. I may not have achieved the things in life that I wanted to achieve, but I'm damn proud of where I am today because I worked my ass off to get here. No, I don't make a ton of money. I will never be able to afford a house on my income. I'm ok with that, because I still work hard, and can provide for everything that I need on my own. All because I have a solid work ethic.

I also feel that it's important to appreciate the things that I do have and not sit around worrying about the things that I don't have. I have a roof over my head. I have food in my cupboards and in my fridge. I can pay my bills and go out and have a good time. So I don't have the most up to date furniture, or top of the line appliances. Heck, I don't have a dishwasher or a microwave. And that's so totally ok. I have the things that I need, and everything else is quite simply a bonus.

Finally, it's important to be thankful for everything that's in my life. It kind of encompasses everything listed above, but also includes other things. I'm thankful for the job I have, and for the fact that I even have a job to begin with. There's a significant percentage of the population that don't have the luxury of being employed. I'm thankful for my family, my friends, my cat, the roof over my head, my athletic experiences (aka rowing, running, kayaking, etc...) which have allowed me to meet some absolutely incredible people and make life-long friends. I'm thankful that I have the ability to introspect and write down my thoughts. A friend of mine said once to me that she's thankful that she has functioning arms and legs, as that's something we often take for granted, so I have made a point of being thankful for having a functioning body, and also a functioning mind.

Bottom line, I think it's important to be happy with who and what we DO have in our lives, and not to constantly stress about what we don't have. That doesn't mean I don't think it's important to aim high, I just think we take the little things for granted all to often.

Cheers.