Living Your Best Life

     I took a class in the fall that included a bunch of reading, and discussion. While there was much involved (tests, analyses, etc.), I jokingly nick-named it “Book Club for Credit” – and that stuck.
     As we gathered (on Zoom) to dissect the deeper meaning of that week’s reading, one of our foci was on the characters: who would we write a letter to, and what would it say? One of my classmates tended to pick the most emotionally-balanced character, and said “I feel that [name] is just living their best life!” Our analysis would then go into how and why that person was, and how and why the other characters were not.
     It got to be a bit of a joke – by about we would ask “So who is living their best life in this book?” It was lovely. (I quite miss those classes, to be honest!)
     The idea can be transferred, however, to our own lives. I would recommend we refrain from making such analyses of our friends and neighbours, as we do not have the same exposure to their lives as authors grant us into the lives of fictional characters in books. 
     But we can ask ourselves at the end of each day: How am I living my best life? Not in comparing ourselves to others, but in celebrating the reality of our beautiful and unique experiences each day?
     I can be quite reflective, and quite revealing… and maybe we can take it one step further. Imagine waking up each morning and thinking: “today I can live my best life – by doing X and Y and Z!” And maybe that will happen, and maybe it won’t, but at least we’ve tried.
     I imagine that if we start our days by deciding that it can be a good day, then we can make it a good day. It doesn’t mean that the rest of the world will be all rainbows and butterflies – but it allows us to focus our perspectives on making our day a good day - one day at a time. 
     So… how are you going to live your best life today?
 
Rom 15.13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.