One of my favorite films, The Sheltering Sky, is based on the novel by Paul Bowles.  A brilliant writer who spent a great deal of his life in Morocco, he was often able to capture in his work, the life experience of his readers and viewers, and thus offer experience on two planes simultaneously.  The following quote, which I have included in the introduction to the chapter "SPICE" in Entertaining in The Raw, is one I often think of when making daily choices:

 

Remembering

Because we do not know when we will die we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well and yet everything happens only a certain number of times and a very small number really. How many times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your life that you can't even conceive of your life without it. Perhaps four or five times more? Perhaps not even that. How many times will you watch the full moon rise, perhaps twenty, and yet it all seems so limitless.

It sounds so obvious - and it is.  We have numerous opportunities to embrace life and yet, our days are so full, our pace so quick, we frequently let them pass.  With that sentiment in mind, while watching the first true snow of the season fall in Maine, I set aside my work and went outside to savor the afternoon.