A New Year!  We have lived another year or have we? Are you sure? I just spent New Year's Eve at a beautiful hotel. There were parties going on everywhere. I chose to go to a party that had live music from the 60's and 70's, yes, that shows my age. What was shown to me there was amazing. In one room there were the living and what I call the walking dead. That may sound like a judgment, but I call them like I see them.

The walking dead, are people who look like they are living and breathing, but are they truly living?  Watch them carefully and you will see a different story all together.   Look in their eyes.  There is no one home. They are not fully in their bodies.

I sat down at a table where there were four other couples.  I sat next to a man whom I had never met before.  He look to be in his 70's and his wife looked to be in her 60's. We started up a conversation.  They were wintering in San Diego, living there on their Yacht  He looked tired and held his head in his hands.  He leaned over and said to me, "I don't know why I am here. In fact, I should have been gone years ago."  He continued through the night closing his eyes, and looking uncomfortable.  He then got up and left the party.  His wife and the other couple left soon after.

Then there was the couple who had joined us earlier.  They were friends of friends.  We spent the weekend together.  The woman had just been diagnosed with cancer and had told her friend that she was resigned to die soon.  She and her husband sat quietly through the night, said little and did little.  When asked  to dance, they said no, you go.  The sitting went on all weekend.  When we did ask to go for a walk the next day along the waterfront, they weren't sure they wanted to go.  They followed along for a short distance and asked to turn back.

This was the anniversary of the day I discovered I had breast cancer three years earlier.  What I came to know from going through the process of facing a life threatening disease is that you have a choice to make at that time.  I chose not to die and here I am three years later with no cancer and no disease.  I have worked to heal myself.  Yet here I was surrounded by people who did not choose life.  Some of them were conscious of this fact and some were not.  What this showed me was that it was not enough to decide that I did not want to die.  I needed to decide that I wanted to live.  Live life to the fullest.  Dance, sing, make love, smell the roses, surround myself with others that wish to live.  That is why I called to myself the living dead.  So that it was so clear to me that I had not only chosen not to die, but I had chosen to live. 

I by the way danced my heart out.  Not only did I walk along the bay in the dawn of the new year, but I danced to the music coming out of the hotels as I passed along the way.  I had made a new agreement with myself.  The agreement was to LIVE!  Happy New Year.  

New Years Day 2005  by Margo Carrera