life starts now

​Yesterday, my friend Bridget posed this question to her Facebook friends: "If you were to put a message in a bottle, what would the first sentence say?"

Without any thought I typed my response to her - "life starts now."

Because my answer did come without thought - I thought about it a lot afterward.

It struck me that my response reflected the message I'd like to find in a bottle - and not the one I'd like to deliver. Her question left me imagining a walk on a beach, stumbling upon a bottle, opening it to explore the contents inside, and pulling out a small piece of paper and then reading the words: life starts now.

I could feel the renewal. I felt myself holding that bottle and staring at it and wondering who'd sent this perfectly timed message. God, maybe? I don't know.

All I know is for a moment I didn't feel stuck. I didn't feel stuck between a past that has no ondoing and a future that seems at times completely unattainable. Because I do get stuck there at times - I think we all do to a degree - between the undoing and the unattainable.

Time is the enemy there, I think. It refuses to be re-written. It refuses to allow you to believe there is ever enough left.

But life isn't about time. Not the time behind me or the time ahead of me. It's not about spring forward or fall back. It's not about the time I've spent or the time I have left.

Life is about now. It's about the opportunity we are granted with each moment to believe time is my friend and not my enemy. Life is about this beautiful gift we've been granted to say in any given second of our choosing - life starts now.

In this very second, we get the gift of letting go of the treasures that passed us by and letting go of the treasures we feel will never arrive and we get this opportunity to create a treasure out of right now.

It's a gift that comes every second. Because life always starts again right now.

Right now we get to reach down and pick up that bottle and read - life starts now.

I am so grateful for friends who toss bottles into the water. I am grateful for the messages they send into the world. They truly do make time our friend and not our enemy.