Living our lives

According to the AP, Terri Schiavo "... showed us how to live. She showed us the gift of life and how we should share it." Her sister has said she "... "shown the world what perseverance and determination are all about."

Oh please.

This woman's primary achievement was to be in a persistant vegetative state since she was 26 years old. SHE hasn't shown us much of anything. She hadn't had TIME to live very much! Her family, on the other hand, has shown us why it is so important to leave a living will and advance directives.

If Terri is a role model for how to live life, then lemme outta here now.

I don't think most people even begin to understand how to live their lives fully until they've got considerably more age than 26 years. The 20s are about *ME* (just like the teens and childhood), at least as far as I can remember, and from what I see today. If you're lucky enough to have kids, there are about 18 years (per kid) where most of your energies go to THEM (that is if you're really raising them right -- it just takes so much time and energy and work!) That takes most of us into the 40s, although I have a couple of friends who are in their 40s with small children, bless them.

And then there are the 50s. By this time, with the mistakes and the bruises and the ups and downs you've come through already, you may be able to determine just who you really are and what you really want and how you really need to be living. I don't know what the 60s, 70s, 80s, and onward may bring, but I'm hoping for more insight. Not that I think I've done too badly.

I just have a problem according dead people the 'wonderful person' status. Not everyone who dies is a wonderful person who shows 'us how to live.' Not everyone who is alive is really alive, either (some of them are just breathing through the days, living the same day year after year).

I'm sorry Terri didn't get to live more of her life. I'm sorry her parents devoted the last 15 years to trying to bring her back to real life, and not to living it themselves. Who knows if they'll be able to find it again?

I want to make the most of each day, not just breathe through it.