LIVING ONE DAY AT A TIME

                      There is more to life than increasing its speed.  Mahatma Ghandi

I have been on a kind of hiatus from blogging but now I'm back! I've been busy working on my Etsy Shop, Gwen And Alma's, but there's still more to do. I guess that's always the way it is in business, even a small business! 

While sharing about Gwen And Alma's here, I'll also continue to share my adventure in "simplifying" my life, my journey in experiencing the joy of "gratitude", and some thoughts on "living in the moment". I hope you'll join me!

I love to find old books in my hunt for treasures for my little shop. But before I go any further I guess I better begin calling it "OUR" little shop because my husband and daughter work on this fun endeavor with me!

So anyhoo, I'm always on the lookout for interesting old books and I found one called, "A Way Of Life" by William Osler. It's a little book printed in 1937 and it's an address delivered to Yale Students in the Spring of 1913 as a sort of "lay sermon". The gist of Osler's sermon is to do the day's work, to live in the day. He coined the phrase, "living in day-tight compartments". I had heard this phrase before but didn't know it was first coined by this man who I had never heard of. This was right up my alley in seeking to live in the moment. Even thought he speaks more of living "in the day", it's the same idea and I wondered what he would have to say back in 1913 about a concept that is popular today and perhaps even thought of as a "new idea" for this day and age. 

Osler was a very wise and learned man but his main philosophy of life that he says helped him become very accomplished was simply a "habit". He explains how he began life in the best of environments, having grown up in a parsonage as one of a family of nine children. He has filled Chairs in Four Universities, accepted several professorships, written a successful book ( not this one ), and had been asked to lecture at Yale. These accomplishments would suppose that he would have "brains of a special quality", he asserts. But, he says, and as his friends would agree, he was actually a man of mediocre character. The one quality, he suggests, that helped him attain this degree of success in life was simply a "habit". A habit of living one day at a time, or living in "day-tight compartments" as he phrased it. Not worrying about the future or living in the past but focusing on what is right in front of you.

Sounds so simple really and it is BUT it isn't! It's NOT simple because our habits have been most often in letting our thoughts wander into the past and mindlessly into the future. But it IS simple because it only takes practice on a daily basis focusing on the present moment and the present day. This simple change of habit, Osler claims, can help you accomplish more than you ever thought possible.
 

This little 41 page book explains more on this topic and is a quick read but one you will want to come back to again and again for inspiration. I might want to keep this little book for myself and not sell it but we'll see. It's a little treasure for sure!