I don’t have time to write much this week, but I was wondering—do you have an ethos for life? A sort of ‘code’ that you try to live by?

The thing that I most often try to remind myself is this: You only have one life. Life is short. Live well.

Of course, ‘living well’ is open to interpretation, but for me it means trying to live each day in a good way, a way that makes the world a better place, the way that I think God wants me to live. I realise that living well will be different for different people, but I still think that as a whole, this is a good aim in life. I also try to evaluate how I am doing, to spend a little time at bedtime assessing whether I think I have managed this. Usually I have not, and there are things I wish I hadn’t said or done. But again, I think this is a helpful thing to do—not to beat myself up, but so I can be deliberate about trying to change in the future. I think it is possible, as we get older, to live better lives than we did when we were younger. (Not, I hasten to clarify, better lives than other people—of whatever age—but better than we used to when we were younger.) Maybe, if I live to be a thousand, I might be a holy person.

This time of year is especially important for me to remind myself of this aim (to live well, not to be holy when I’m a thousand). It’s very difficult to prioritise our time as we near the end of the year, and Christmas looms ever nearer, and there is so much that I want to do. Days are not long enough.

Therefore, as I juggle the building stress of knowing I still need to buy lots of gifts, and I ought to clean the floor, and I really need to spend a few hours studying, and I haven’t had my eyes tested for ages and I need to sort that, plus all the regular stuff that has to happen in order to live. Sometimes it’s too much, and I need to stop, and remember. I need to decide what is important today. What needs to go on a list for tomorrow, and what can be fitted in but only if there’s time. And when I am doing stuff—going to the optician or rushing into the supermarket for milk or walking the dog—am I doing it well? Am I making the world, my little bit of the world, better? Sometimes it’s not so much what we do, but how we do it.

I will leave you with that thought for now, because I am trying to decipher a book about Hebrew punctuation, so that I can then decipher the Hebrew. It’s very interesting, but quite complicated, and not many people seem to explain it so I’m rather pleased that I managed to find a book about it. Reading Hebrew is very like reading a secret code, and you need to look for clues beyond the words sometimes. Meg is less interested, and keeps coming to poke me with her nose, so I shall have to walk her soon. But I shall try to do both things well. Because I only have one life, and life is short.

Hope you manage to live well this week. Thanks for reading and take care.
Love, Anne x