My father is 81 and has alzheimers so he is not always very clear these days.  He does still have his moments of clarity and some great wisdom though.  The other night while visiting him, he said a few things that really made me think so I wanted to share them here.

First he asked “what do you want out of life?”  I thought he was asking me that question but as I was preparing to answer him, I realized he was asking himself that question.  His answer was “I don’t know”.  As many do with alzheimers, he kept repeating the same question and answer over and over again.  In between though, he would look up at me and tell me how much he loves me.  I think that was his answer.  What he wants out of life is love and family.

Something else he said also make me think “We used to have nothing, now we have too much”.   Since he often lives in the very distant past he remembers clearly how little he and his family had growing up in the 1930’s and 40’s.   Though I am not sure what he meant by that statement, it made me think about how much we do have now and how distracting and sometimes overwhelming that can feel.

What would it be like if we all asked ourselves

What do I want out of life?

What would it be like if we stopped to think about just how much we do have, where there is perhaps excess that we don’t really need at all and how that excess may distract us from what we truly do want out of life.