A few weeks ago I confronted my mortality. Not because I wanted to, it wasn’t one of those moments where you dig deep and wonder about the meaning of your life and the time you have left. No, it was an ordinary day….at first.

I was up and at ’em early as usual, driving my daughter from our home in the country to the city for school. Just like any other day.  As we reached highway speed (100kms), the hood of my car let go, smashing against the windshield and roof, shattering the glass and scaring the bleep out of my daughter and I. I slammed on the brake, oblivious to the danger of doing so in the middle of the highway. Thank God no one was behind me, or that could have been disastrous! I limped onto the shoulder, got the hood down (ish) and limped home to get another vehicle.

I was shaken, thinking how much worse it could have been, how thankful I was to be alive. Has that ever happened to you? Sure it has, close calls happen to most of us. But here’s the thing – for the rest of that week (Murphy’s Law, it happened on a Monday morning! ) I kept seeing people do things that were life-threatening….ON PURPOSE! My life-threatening morning was an ACCIDENT!  Are we sometimes willingly risking our lives, our health by the choices we make everyday? YES!  Even choosing to let 1 person (out of the 7+billion on the planet) ruin your day, the cascade of chemical reactions that follows is horrible for your health and slowly takes its toll. What about eating things with ingredients that you can’t pronounce? Does the body recognize these things as food? Are we slowly poisoning ourselves? What about smoking, vaping, drinking, living a sedentary life? Hey, I’m not saying stop having fun, let’s just make good, healthy choices more often.

So what can we change? Eat more real foods, stop putting chemicals (especially those made in a lab! ) into your body, move more, don’t give people the power to influence your physical or emotional well-being. These are SOME small steps. You’ll think of others as you start to feel better and realize, we should be thankful to be alive. Make the rest of your life, the best of your life.