Appreciating the things we take for granted…

Tonight I struggled to motivate myself to workout. I left work a bit early, ran all of the errands on my to-do list, and caught up on all my emails. I had nothing to do and no distraction. I was set up to enjoy a great workout. However, I just could not get motivated. I did workout, but at maybe 50% energy. As I was showering afterwards, I was angry at myself as I could not figure out why I didn’t want to work out. I reflected on a challenge I gave Matt a few months ago as he was getting into great shape. I told him, come up with a ring tone to motivate me to get out of bed. Something motivational. He resisted, but I pushed to get him to help motivate me. About a week later, he sent me an email with the motivation. I couldn’t find the exact words, but he said “think about all of the children at your hospital, who would love to wake up today and run around outside. Walk up and down the hallways. You can do these things. These kids are taking chemotherapy and fighting diseases and you can’t get out of bed to workout?” It was a lot better than that. Hopefully I can get the exact email and post it, because it was a lot better than that. It just got me thinking again. We often go through life taking advantage of the small things we have. I am healthy and had the perfect day to workout. Sure we have those days when we just don’t have it, so maybe it was one of them. But I started to remember back to when I broke my femur and couldn’t run track. For months, all I wanted to do was run around a 400m circle. This fall when I hurt my Achilles, all I wanted to do was be able to run around and be active. Now that I have been healthy for awhile, I choose not to take advantage. This holds true for so many things in life.

When was the last time we really appreciated our eyes? Really just took a second and thought, wow, look at that. And just paused. When was the last time we enjoyed the sense of touch. Just felt the recliner we sit in? The clothes that we put on? When do we light a candle and just enjoy the scent. Or bake our favorite dish to take in the smell? All of these things in life we take for granted, but they are not guaranteed. It would be interesting to be part of an experiment and have to live a day with a blind fold on. What would you do? I guarantee you couldn’t do the vast majority of your tasks at home or at work. What if our nerves could be shut off for one day and we couldn’t feel anything? How long after the experiment would we start to take the same small things for granted again? Would it be a cycle?

One of the biggest reasons I went into a profession within health care was because of my experience working at Sarah Bush Lincoln hospital. I vividly remember working 2nd shift and delivering medications to the ICU at 10:55 as I walked out at 11:00. The ICU was right above the exit to the parking lot. I would get in my car look up at the ICU and be thankful that I had a good job while being in college. I really appreciated everything I had in life in those moments. Those 8 people, most intubated, did not get to go home tonight. They didn’t even get to stand on two legs. How could I complain in that moment about life as I looked up. Working in a hospital grounded me. It gave me a better perspective on life.

As I think about it now, I sometimes forget this. As most of my work is not done on patient floors anymore, I forget about these moments. As I develop into a pharmacy manager, I need to make time to go up on the floors and see patients to remember exactly why I do what I do. It will help me professionally, but more importantly, it will help me personally…appreciate the simple things in life.