Make sure you show people love today- Its going to be too late very soon!

Have you ever wondered about the shortness of this life? About the 'full' emptiness of this life. Have you ever stopped to reason that gradually the full lives that we have built today will gradually become emptied out sometimes in the future, or perhaps it has already started emptying out for some of us.

One minute we were toddlers, the next we had become strapping young lads, and then we were married, and we gave birth. We thereafter spend the rest of our lives nurturing these kids. We share their moments, often times forgetting our own. We watch them take their first steps, watch them run, watch them start kindergarten, then primary schools, watch them go off to boarding school, and then off to university. And suddenly they are gone. You are left with snatches of time; 2 weeks here, 1 month there, and its all over. The family begins to break up (not because of strive, but because these little birds also need to find their own nests).

In the process of bringing them up, we agonize whether they are going to turn out right. Most often our own idea of turning out right differs from their own ideas, but nonetheless we worry, and we pray, and we worry and we pray again. And they grow older, finish school, start work, have families, and start their own cycle again. Suddenly we become outsiders in their lives, just as our parents had become in our lives years before. Still our worries never stop; most of the time, it continues till we breathe our last.

In all of these, I often worry that we lose sight of the most important moments in our lives!

We take those important moments for granted. We fail to enjoy moments that will become indelible in our memories in the times to come. We pass over opportunities to loosen up, lighten up, and enjoy the odd day out with kids, the odd quiet time with our spouses, the odd 'together time' with families. We don't say the things we ought to say, when we ought to say them, and to the people that we are supposed to say them to.

We withhold our emotions, we postpone the days of positive reckoning, we fail to acknowledge people in our life, we fail to let them know how much they mean to us. To do this will be to show weakness, we often reason. Or we say if we do it too much, the recipient may use it against us. Simply put, we don't show the love we feel. We don't affirm the relationships that we enjoy. We live just outside the edge of opening up to our emotions. We don't understand why we do it, but we do it all the same.

We sometimes naturally think that the object of our affection (or unspoken affection) will be there for ever and we will be able to say it tomorrow, or the next day, or next month, or the next time we see them. And we are shocked one day when we discover that they are no more. Either we can no longer reach them, or they are dead.

I think about my parents a lot more now. They are in their 70s. At a time, they were busy people with their lives ahead of them, but now their lives are mostly empty. I think about the emptiness in their lives more now with respect to what they sacrificed for me. They have spent their own lives worrying about me, doing things for me, bringing me up, and like the bird, when I grew my wings, I flew away. Now, all my mother's children have flown away. The closest to her lives 5 hours away. And she is lucky if she sees all of us together more than once in a year. My mum is retired, and I am sure she must be bored with her life. Even though my dad is still alive, unfortunately, theirs is not a relationship that is still nurtured into old age. So now she is 'alone' even in the midst of people. She calls me after two weeks that I have not called her and talks about things I see as irrelevant details. But that is what remains of her life now.

I didn't show her much love while I was growing up. I didn't even think that she needed the affirmation that she was doing a great job in my life. I didn't thank her then for all the sacrifices, and the things she had to contend with to give me a good life. Now that I am older and with my family, I am in the same cycle, and I wonder if my kids also treat me the way I treated my mother. I buy her things; a new car, a new watch; a new phone; I renovate her house, give her money, but what does she need all those things for? The things that really matter to her right now, I am unable or unwilling or even seemingly incapable of giving her.

And it struck me, that this woman needs me now. She needs be to be there, to show her care, to call her, to listen to her monologue, to see things her way, to humour her before death takes her away permanently. I am talking about my mum because I am closer to her than I am to my dad. Even at that, he also deserves the same show of affection, the same affirmation, the same acknowledgement.

I also looked at their lives and they are the classical example of a marriage made in heaven, messed up in the world. 48 years and there is nothing to be clung to but moments of misunderstanding, of strive, of hostility, of civility and even of silent hatred and regret. I am reminded every day of their missed opportunities, and much more than that, by their mortality, and I am reminded to take the people in my life seriously. I am reminded to call them more, tell them I love them more, spend time with them more, build up a memory bank of shared moments. You should also do the same things I am now reminded of. This does not stop with family alone. Even friends, even co-workers, even people who are not really close to you, but whom fate has brought you way. Even if you simply just appreciate them, please let them know. Don't wait till they are gone before you begin to rue the life you could have had or the opportunities for expression that you have missed.

Love the people in your life today, for they may not be there tomorrow, and they certainly will not be there forever. Enjoy the relationships you have today. Tomorrow may be too late. Etch the time you spend with your spouses and your children in stone today. These are the memories you will fall back on in later years. Don't forget, Love them today. Tomorrow is one day less in the already numbered days that you have!