DailyJim: Giving flowers while we’re still alive

Hello everyone, welcome to another Daily Gym. Today is Wednesday, August 21st, 2024. I missed yesterday, but that happens today.

Oh, excuse me. Oh goodness, quite a mix of food today. Let's just be real.

Today I want to call it giving flowers while we're still alive.

So, earlier today, I've been dating this woman and I gave her flowers. And she said to me a phrase that she heard or a quote that she heard before was, if you don't give me flowers while I'm alive, I don't want you to give me flowers when I'm dead.

And that brought up so much for me. Obviously, the smelling of the flowers is something that we can only do while we're alive. It reminded me of my mother passing and all the flowers that not only did we buy to put around the casket and such, but just how many flowers that were there at the funeral that we took home. And my dad and I stayed in the house with these flowers.

So in a weird way, it's like my mom never got to smell those flowers, but at least we did. While we were still alive, we got to smell the flowers and appreciate the look and the smell of these flowers in the house.

Another reason I think I'm talking about that is because a colleague, friend of mine from Uganda, I found out passed away today. Or we found out that he passed away today. I'm not exactly sure what happened, but I learned that he passed away at age 41 or 42. And this is someone who was president of ISAC in Uganda. He was one of the top, I'd say, advertising executives in Uganda, started an advertising company and was really involved in the advertising industry. And just from what I remember, a powerful, optimistic, inspirational man that just really really, let's really push forward. Frank Muthusi is his name, was his name.

And just thinking about how short life can be sometimes and how we can be so stressed out about what's going to happen in the future and that we really don't even know what's happening in the present. And that often we say, I'm not going to give somebody flowers. Why would I give them And flowers, they just die quickly.

But sometimes humans die more quickly than the flowers.

And we never know what's going to happen.

Yeah, I just...

We never know when something's going to die. We never know when a relationship is going to end. And we never know when our current situation is going to transform significantly.

And I think often we don't give the flowers. We don't smell the flowers. We don't appreciate the flowers, the moments, the beauty that we have while we have it.

We focus on the future. We focus on the past. We worry so much what's going to happen and we disconnect from the present.

We disconnect from the feelings, we disconnect from the sensations, we disconnect from these waves of experience that come through us.

And then we don't have it anymore.

I um, sometimes just at a loss for words for what to say when something some loss like this happens and it just reminds of all the other losses, you know my mom passed I just I thought about how many other human beings on this planet has have lost a mother and how many of us will lose a mother frankly all of us if we survive to see it.

And i'm not sure if frank was a father or a husband or but i know he was a son, he was a child of somebody at some point and i don't know if his parents are around or or his caretakers, or whoever are around, but I can only imagine the pain that they're feeling.

And we're all going to lose a friend at some point too, right?

And again, it doesn't have to be a loss to death. It can just be a loss of a relationship that we enjoyed and appreciated, and all of a sudden it changes. And then people no longer talk to each other again, or if they do, it's 10, 15, 20 years down the line, maybe, because then, again, there's no guarantee we're going to make it 10, 15, 20 years down the line. We may not even make it 10, 15, 20 seconds or minutes down the line.

And life can be so robust, but it can be so fragile.

And love can the experiences that we have can seem like they last forever but they can also be so fleeting.

I just feel, it's like a wave of grief just flowing across. I first saw it in Uganda and the groups from Uganda, but then I passed the news on to people in Kenya and people in Tanzania that all knew him or some that knew him. I just feel the emotion spread, the shock spread. Boom, boom, boom. One person after another getting hit with the wave. If you've ever been in the ocean, sometimes it feels nice to get hit by a wave, and sometimes the waves can really drain us and take all our energy.

Flip us upside down, throw us around underneath the water and have us come up, having swallowed, like breathe in salt water through our nose and maybe hit our head or hit our knee on the sand on the bottom. And I think sometimes that's what these waves of emotion can do. Just leave us totally disoriented and bruised.

So, yeah, so I guess I was just, maybe overall to say, just give flowers while people are alive, while we're still alive. Thrive, smell the flowers, give them, just focus on the preciousness of life and feeling it all while we can.

So, I know this wasn't kind of a, this is a different tone than it normally does when I talk on this episode, these daily gyms, but sometimes we feel different things and And it's okay to feel what we're feeling. And today I feel pretty sad. Pretty reflective. And yeah. Yeah, it's kind of down. So.

Anyways. Appreciate having this platform. I appreciate you listening. If you want to join on Jim and Friends, I'd love to talk to you there.

And yeah. Until tomorrow. if tomorrow arrives but let's live for today alright goodnight.