Personal Philosophy

“Cherish every moment with those you love at every stage of your journey.”-Jack Lanton. It is very important to cherish every moment spent with your loved ones. Often, we take advantage of our family members because they tend to be the ones who will always be on our side no matter what. It is easy for us to blow off a family party or a cousin’s birthday to go to our friends birthday party or hang out with our boyfriend. It is ok for us to spend time with our friends, but we also need to make time to spend with our family, because before you know it they can be out of our life forever.

            Before you experience a family member’s death, it is often hard to feel the emptiness and sorrow of a loss. For me, it was my grandmother’s death. My grandmother had died 3 days after my 13^th birthday. As I was celebrating my birthday with my friends, my mom’s phone began to ring. The caller I.D said Mom, so instantly my Mom had picked it up. My mom had always felt a little nervous when she would see my grandmother’s number on her screen. At this time my mom had been serving my friends and I food making it hard for her to keep up with the conversation and the food service. As a result, my mom told my grandmother that she was busy at the moment and would therefore call her the next morning. Unfortunately, we got another phone call at 3:00 in the morning when I heard my mom  say “Hello”, followed by a high pitched scream. I got out of bed to see what was going on when my mom had told me the sad news. My grandma had passed away from a stroke. Instantly my world had turned around. All I could think about was the time that I didn’t spend with my Grandma. The guilt of not talking to her on the phone when I was busy doing homework or working on something else had begun to take a huge toll on me. I was angry with myself because I did not take a few minutes out of my day to hear her voice on the phone and ask her how her day was. I would have never expected that this time would have come so soon. There was so many things that I had yet to experience with my grandma. So many memories that we had yet to share. At this moment, was when I took a minute to think about the importance of time and family. How fast someone could disappear from my life forever. I could only manage to think about the negative aspects of my relationship with her. All the times that I had done something wrong. I was blind to the positive memories we had together and all the laughing memories. The times when I went to Mexico and she would take me to the same local coffee shop to order a caramel frappuccino. I have now learned the importance of spending time with your family, because before you know it they can be gone. It is better to maintain a good relationship with your family members in comparison to the feeling of regret from the lack of a strong bond.

            Although we often see our family as a second priority to our daily life activities, it is very important to appreciate their existence. Many people ignore the presence and importance of their family members until it is too late. Life eventually ends for everyone. There is nothing we can do about it besides making it the best it can be with fun memories spent with the people that mean the most to you. It is important to cherish these memories spent with your family members because when they pass away they are the only things you have to keep them close to you even if they are not physically there. We must take time out of our life to spend time with our family and create memories that will stay with us forever before it is too late.