Give and receive the benefits of your life

Life is a give and take affair, an in and out experience. Sometimes though, you may try to hold on with an iron grip to what you have. Are you good at holding your breath? If so, you naturally know you can’t hold it forever. You breathe in oxygen, but you can’t keep it for very long, can you? In fact, relatively quickly, your blood carbon dioxide level will reach a critical point and you’ll be forced to exhale.

While this probably seems like an elementary and obvious mechanism, this is applicable to more complex examples such as finances and work, relationships and health. Let’s say you are financially sound. It only makes sense that you would want to preserve that stability. It’s a wise decision. However, you know you can’t hold onto every bit of your resources. You have to buy food, pay for services and other expenses. A money flow is part of the equation.

We tend to grab, grip and glom onto what we presently think we have, not fully realizing that it must flow in some way. Giving and receiving is part of the process. Here’s another example. You may have a wonderful relationship with your children or other young people in your care. You want to nurture and protect them within reason, but somehow you know that they will grow up. But the good news is they may flow back a gift of connecting with you in an adult way later.

Life is never really static nor stagnant. The question becomes: how can you flow better with the shifting sands that continuously take place?

Where in your current life can you loosen your grip? The more you can acknowledge the inflow and the outflow of any part of life, the more you can access joy, peace and freedom.

Angela and Dennis Buttimer For The AJC