The 92 year old, petite, well-poised and proud lady, who is fully
dressed each morning by eight o’clock, with her hair fashionably
coiffed and makeup perfectly applied, even though she is legally blind,
moved to a nursing home. Her husband of 70 years recently passed
away, making the move necessary. After many hours of waiting
patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, she smiled sweetly when
told her room was ready. As she manoeuvred her walker to the
elevator, she was provided a visual description of her tiny room by the
accompanying attendant, including the eyelet sheets that had been
hung on her window.
“I love it,” she stated with the enthusiasm of an eight year old having
just been presented with a new puppy.
“Mrs Jones, you haven’t seen the room…. Just wait.”
“That doesn’t have anything to do with it,” she replied. “Happiness is
something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like my room or
not doesn’t depend on how the furniture is arranged… it’s how I
arrange my mind. I already decided to love it … It’s a decision I make
every morning when I wake up. I have a choice; I can spend the day
in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that
no longer work, or get out of bed and be thankful for the ones that do.
Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes open I’ll focus on the new
day and all the happy memories I’ve stored away … just for this time
in my life.
Life is like a bank account … you withdraw from what you’ve put
in. So, my advice to you would be to deposit a lot of happiness in the
bank account of memories.
Thank you for being a part of my journey in this world and
filling my Memory bank as well.
I am still depositing.
Remember the five simple rules to live free and be happy: –
1. Free your heart from hatred.
2. Free your mind from worries.
3. Live simply.
4. Give more.
5. Expect less.
As the senior citizen pointed out, her happiness derived from her lifetime’s bank account of happy memories, and she was still banking to accumulate more in her account. I fully subscribe to her point of view and would add the observation that we may sometimes need to change our bankers, the main people controlling our affairs in life, in order to develop a good balance.
Dear Lloyd,
Yes, let us all keep depositing happy memories into our bank.
At the same time, we may want to view that we are the owners of our bank and that we can chose what goes in or leave the bank account, right? 🙂
To your best life and life bank account!
Here’s to owning the biggest bank account of happiness and happy memories we can bank on
Yes, Mary, may each and every one of us own the best possible ‘bank’ of life happiness and wonderful memories.
Thanks for the story. What I liked most was the rules. I fully agree with the first four. The last one in my opinion needs to be rephrased to read as “Do not expect anything in return”. A multitude of problems faced by human beings stem from their “expectations”. When you know that nothing in this world “belongs” to you, why expect?
Thanks for sharing and I can see where you are coming from.
Yes, when we do something without expecting anything in return, we could be more at peace and do it happily.
Often times, It could be the “expectation” that is hindering our growth and sense of happiness.
Keep your comments coming. Cheers.