“…the chances we failed to seize, the moments of happiness we allowed to drift away. Today it seems to me that my whole life was nothing but a string of those small near misses: a race whose result we know beforehand but in which we fail to bet on the winner.” Jean-Dominique Bauby, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death

To banish the “near misses”

To be aware of the gifts revealed to us

no matter how tiny

To ignore superfluous detail –

the bullshit and posturing,

the maneuvering and manipulating.

To see what is truly a divine moment

and just “be”

in each breath,

in each heartbeat.

To reach out and embrace everything you already have,

even if it’s not quite what you’ve expected

but better, if perceived through the same eyes,

but a different lens.

To turn the “string of near misses”

into a necklace of precious gems

Moments transformed into memories.