It’s our UPS guy.

For the 4 years that we have lived here, and he has been delivering packages to us, he has been running.

I assume he was running long before he became our UPS guy, as he was already very practiced at his art when we first met him.

He parks at the street and runs across our big lawn. He parks at the top of our neighbor’s driveway and runs the quarter mile down and quarter mile back up the hill.

He is like the wind. If I don’t happen to be outside, I won’t see him; just find a package neatly placed by the door. I have never been able to catch him at Christmas to give him his Christmas cookies.

If by chance I am outside when he arrives, he hands me my package and I say, “Thank you.” He says “My pleasure” and runs back to the truck. I can tell it is his pleasure, but I never get to ask, “Why are you running.”

Therefore, I have to conjecture that he runs because he loves it.

Instead of thinking that he has a job that keeps him from running, he has built it into his job, and has obviously suspended judgment about what other people may think about it.

Interesting approach isn’t it.

Instead of coming up with reasons and excuses why he can’t do what he loves to do, he has designed it into his life, and the result appears to be a well-enjoyed day, both for him and those that have him in their life.

We can see that nature demonstrates that same intelligent design. The squirrel has to find food, but plays and goofs off while being very busy, diligent, and persistent. The birds also must find food, but sing and soar while doing so.

The tree must maintain itself, but while doing so provides shade, purifies the air, provides shelter, and charms us with its beauty.

We are the ones that divide what must be done, and what we want to do, instead of making them one and the same.

Opening the blinds this morning I was in time to see one of our resident bunnies hop our garden path. He was clearly enjoying the morning.

I watched as he found one of the baby lilies I had missed spraying with rabbit repellant as he bit it off near the bottom and thoroughly enjoyed chopping it up. I even enjoyed watching, what’s one little lily compared to being able to observe pure happiness?

He didn’t wake up this morning thinking; “Oh, it’s Monday morning, gotta go back to work, ugh.”

Instead, it was another day laid wide-open ready to delight in while “working” to provide food for himself.

Have you ever heard the morning chorus of birds? Wouldn’t it be an amazing event to hear humans singing as one like that first thing in the morning? Everyone singing in the shower, singing in the kitchen, singing in the car, singing in the office, singing at the job site. Singing together in celebration of another day.

No matter what our “work” environment may be, we are able to design our personal mode of happiness into it. We don’t have to put off “running” to when we get off work, or retire.

Actually, we can’t put it off. Our “work” is really to express the unique expression of the Divine that each of us is.

When we don’t do that, when we choose to suppress Its expression that we are, we not only injure ourselves, but everyone else that is depending on our shade, our song, and our running in whatever forms they may appear.

It is not what labor we do that makes us important. It is not our job that is unique. It is the expression of our lives lived that is unique, and we can and must do that even at “work” in order to not only bless our own lives, but all life.

Take a moment and ask yourself what you are putting off doing because you have to “work.”

Now listen, because how to do both is right there in front of you. I promise. Just look, listen, trust, and follow the internal, quiet, but insistent, guidance that will come to you.

It might not make sense at first, but it will in time. The bird, tree, bunny may not have a choice of whether to enjoy their day or not, it is part of them.

However, it is our choice, and returning to the innocence of a child and the simplicity of nature will help us make it wisely.

Don’t worry if someone else might wonder why you are running. Do it, because you love it! It will be a blessing to everyone, starting with yourself!

George Eliot said, “It’s never too late to be what you might have been” and I am paraphrasing as, “It is never too late to be and celebrate what you are.”